As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And
whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do
say
The breath goes now, and some say, No;
So let us melt, and
make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
’Twere
profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th’
earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But
trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers’ love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot
admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it
is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to
miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go,
endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness
beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are
two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if
th’ other do.
And though it in the center 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.
(1633)
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
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