John Donne

Love built on beauty soon as beauty dies.

Reason is our soul's left hand Faith her right. By this we reach divinity.

Death be not proud though some have called Thee Mighty and dreadful for thou art not so.

Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee.

One short sleep past will wake eternally And death shall be no more Death thou shalt die.

Between cowardice and despair valour is gendered.

No Spring nor Summer beauty hath such grace As I have seen in one Autumnal face.

I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him meerly seise me, and only declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwrack, I would do it in a Sea, where mine impotencie might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.

At the round earth's imagined corners blowYour trumpets, angels, and arise, ariseFrom death, you numberless infinitiesOf souls, and to your scattered bodies go ;All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,All whom war, dea[r]th, age, agues, tyrannies,Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyesShall behold God, and never taste death's woe.But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space ;For, if above all these my sins abound,'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,Teach me how to repent, for that's as goodAs if Thou hadst seal'd my pardon with Thy blood.

Only our love hath no decay; This no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday, Running it never runs from us away, But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

Methinks I lied all winter, when I sworeMy love was infinite, if spring makes it more.

How blest am I in this discovering thee!To enter in these bonds is to be free;Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be. Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be

If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

Love's mysteries in souls do grow,But yet the body is his book.

True and false fears let us refrain, Let us love nobly, and live, and add again Years and years unto years, till we attain To write threescore: this is the second of our reign.

Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to aery thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two ; Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if th' other do. And though it in the centre sit, Yet, when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like th' other foot, obliquely run ; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun.

O! I shall soon despair, when I shall seeThat Thou lovest mankind well, yet wilt not choose me,And Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares, And true plaine hearts doe in the faces rest, Where can we finde two better hemispheares Without sharpe North, without declining West? What ever dyes, was not mixt equally; If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.