Nativity. Poems. John Donne

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      I’ll tell thee now (dear Love) what thou shalt do

      To anger destiny, as she doth us,

      How I shall stay, though she esloygne me thus

      And how posterity shall know it too;

      How thine may out-endure

      Sybil’s glory, and obscure

      Her who from Pindar could allure,

      And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame,

      And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and name.

      Study our manuscripts, those myriads

      Of letters, which have past twixt thee and me,

      Thence write our annals, and in them will be

      To all whom love’s subliming fire invades,

      Rule and example found;

      There, the faith of any ground

      No schismatic will dare to wound,

      That sees, how Love this grace to us affords,

      To make, to keep, to use, to be these his records.

      This book, as long-lived as the elements,

      Or as the world’s form, this all-graved tome

      In cipher writ, or new made idiom;

      We for love’s clergy only’are instruments,

      When this book is made thus,

      Should again the ravenous

      Vandals and the Goths invade us,

      Learning were safe; in this our universe

      Schools might learn sciences, spheres music, angels verse.

      Here Love’s divines (since all divinity

      Is love or wonder) may find all they seek,

      Whether abstract spiritual love they like,

      Their souls exhaled with what they do not see,

      Or loth so to amuse

      Faith’s infirmity, they choose

      Something which they may see and use;

      For, though mind be the heaven, where love doth sit,

      Beauty’a convenient type may be to figure it.

      Here more than in their books may lawyers find,

      Both by what titles mistresses are ours,

      And how prerogative these states devours,

      Transferred from Love himself, to womankind,

      Who though from heart, and eyes,

      They exact great subsidies,

      Forsake him who on them relies

      And for the cause, honor, or conscience give,

      Chimeras, vain as they, or their prerogative.

      Here statesmen (or of them, they which can read)

      May of their occupation find the grounds,

      Love and their art alike it deadly wounds,

      If to consider what’tis, one proceed,

      In both they do excel

      Who the present govern well,

      Whose weakness none doth, or dares tell;

      In this thy book, such will there nothing see,

      As in the Bible some can find out alchemy.

      Thus vent thy thoughts; abroad I’ll study thee,

      As he removes far off, that great heights takes;

      How great love is, presence best trial makes,

      But absence tries how long this love will be;

      To take a latitude

      Sun, or stars, are fitliest viewed

      At their brightest, but to conclude,

      Of longitudes, what other way have we,

      But to mark when, and where the dark eclipses be?

      Let me pour forth

      My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,

      For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,

      And by this mintage they are something worth,

      For thus they be

      Pregnant of thee;

      Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more,

      When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore,

      So thou and I are nothing then, when on a diverse shore.

      On a round ball

      A workman that hath copies by, can lay

      An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,

      And quickly make that, which was nothing, all;

      So doth each tear

      Which thee doth wear,

      A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,

      Till thy tears mix’d with mine do overflow

      This world; by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so.

      O more than moon,

      Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere,

      Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear

      To teach the sea what it may do too soon;

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