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As virtuous men pass mildly away,
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And whisper to their souls to go,
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Whilst some of their sad friends do say
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The breath goes now, and some say, No;
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| |
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| So let us melt, and make no noise, |
5 |
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No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
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‘Twere profanation of our joys
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To tell the laity our love.
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| |
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Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears,
|
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| Men reckon what it did and meant |
10 |
|
But trepidation of the spheres,
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Though greater far, is innocent.
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| |
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Dull sublunary lovers’ love
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(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
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| Absence, because it doth remove |
15 |
|
Those things which elemented it.
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| |
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But we by a love so much refined
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That our selves know not what it is,
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Inter-assured of the mind,
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| Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. |
20 |
| |
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Our two souls therefore, which are one,
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Though I must go, endure not yet
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A breach, but an expansion,
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Like gold to airy thinness beat.
|
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| |
|
| If they be two, they are two so |
25 |
|
As stiff twin compasses are two
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Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
|
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To move, but doth, if th’ other do.
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| |
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And though it in the center sit,
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Yet when the other far doth roam,
|
30 |
|
It leans and hearkens after it,
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And grows erect, as that comes home.
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| |
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Such wilt thou be to me, who must
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Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
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| Thy firmness makes my circle just, |
35 |
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And makes me end where I begun.
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