John Donne
John Donne
John Donnewas an English poet and a cleric in the Church of England. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially compared to that of his contemporaries. Donne's style is characterised by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations...
death god man saw seen shall till
No man ever saw God and lived. And yet, I shall not live till I see God; and when I have seen him, I shall never die.
love saw white
Nurse, O my love is slain, I saw him go / O'er the white Alps alone.
eyes home send thee
Send home my long strayed eyes to me, Which too long have dwelt on thee
absent letters mingle speak thus
Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls; for, thus friends absent speak
balm earth general hath sap
The world's whole sap is sunk: / The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk.
god imagine
Imagine God to be at play with us, but a gamester...
fears god sees
As he that fears God fears nothing else, so, he that sees God sees everything else
constant full love
Love is agrowing, to full constant light; and his first minute, after noon, is night.
brave braver doth hid spring
I have done one brave thing - Than all the Worthies did; And yet a braver thence doth spring - Which is to keep that hid
bracelet bright hair
A bracelet of bright hair about the bone.
bodies body call chastity honest inhumane integrity itself keeping kept lawful less modest purpose reason until virginity virtue willing yield
I call not that virginity a virtue, which resideth only in the bodies integrity; much less if it be with a purpose of perpetually keeping it: for then it is a most inhumane vice. - But I call that Virginity a virtue which is willing and desirous to yield itself upon honest and lawful terms, when just reason requireth; and until then, is kept with a modest chastity of body and mind.
atheist felt love rebel though worst
Rebel and Atheist too, why murmur I, / As though I felt the worst that love could do?
add again attain love second till unto
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.
bodies far though
But O alas, so long, so far / Our bodies why do we forbear? / They're ours, though they're not we, we are / The intelligences, they the sphere.