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 ourselves 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 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 circles just,
And makes me end where I begun.

The Ecstacy

WHERE, like a pillow on a bed,

A pregnant bank swell'd up, to rest

The violet's reclining head,

Sat we two, one another's best.

Our hands were firmly cemented

By a fast balm, which thence did spring; Our eyebeams twisted, and did thread Our eyes upon one double string.

So to engraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one;
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.

As 'twixt two equal armies, Fate
Suspends uncertain victory,

Our souls (which to advance their state
Were gone out) hung 'twixt her and me.

And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day, the same our postures were,
And we said nothing all the day.

If any, so by love refined,

That he soul's language understood, And by good love were grown all mind, Within convenient distance stood,

He (though he knew not which soul spake, Because both meant, both spake the same) Might thence a new concoction take,

And part far purer than he came.

This ecstacy doth unperplex

(We said) and tell us what we love ;

We see by this, it was not sex;

We see, we saw not, what did move :

But as all several souls contain

Mixture of things they know not what, Love these mix'd souls doth mix again, And makes both one, each this, and that.

A single violet transplant,

The strength, the colour, and the size (All which before was poor and scant) Redoubles still, and multiplies.

When love with one another so
Interanimates two souls,

That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.

We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are composed and made,
For th' atomies of which we grow

Are souls, whom no change can invade.

But, oh, alas, so long, so far,

Our bodies why do we forbear? They are ours, though not we; we are Th' intelligences, they the spheres.

We owe them thanks, because they thus
Did us to us at first convey,

Yielded their senses' force to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.

On man Heaven's influence works not so,
But that it first imprints the air:

For soul into the soul may flow,
Though it to body first repair.

As our blood labours to beget

Spirits, as like souls as it can;

Because such fingers need to knit

That subtle knot, which makes us man ;

So must pure lovers' souls descend
To affections and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison lies.

To our bodies turn we then, that so
Weak men on Love reveal'd may look :
Love's mysteries in souls do grow

But yet the body is his book.

And if some lover such as we

Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change when we're to bodies gone.

The Will

BEFORE I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe,
Great Love, some legacies: Here I bequeath
Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see ;
If they be blind, then, Love, I give them thee;
My tongue to Fame; to ambassadors mine ears;
To women, or the sea, my tears.

Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore,

By making me serve her who had twenty more, That I should give to none but such as had too much before.

My constancy I to the planets give ;

My truth to them who at the Court do live ;
Mine ingenuity and openness

To Jesuits; to Buffoons my pensiveness;
My silence to any who abroad have been;
My money to a Capuchin.

Thou, Love, taught'st me, by appointing me
To love there, where no love received can be,
Only to give to such as have an incapacity.

My faith I give to Roman Catholics;
All my good works unto the Schismatics
Of Amsterdam; my best civility
And courtship to an University;

My modesty I give to soldiers bare;
My patience let gamesters share.
Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me
Love her that holds my love disparity,

Only to give to those that count my gifts indignity.

I give my reputation to those

Which were my friends; mine industry to foes;
To schoolmen I bequeath my doubtfulness;
My sickness to physicians, or excess;
To Nature all that I in rhyme have writ;
And to my company my wit.

Thou, Love, by making me adore

Her who begot this love in me before,

Taught'st me to make as though I gave, when I do

but restore.

To him for whom the passing-bell next tolls,
I give my physic books; my written rolls

Of moral counsels I to Bedlam give;

My brazen medals, unto them which live
In want of bread; to them which pass among
All foreigners, mine English tongue.

Thou, Love, by making me love one
Who thinks her friendship a fit portion
For younger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportion.

Therefore I'll give no more, but I'll undo
The world by dying, because love dies too.
Then all your beauties will be no more worth
Than gold in mines, where none doth draw it forth,
And all your graces no more use shall have

Than a sun-dial in a grave.

Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me

Love her who doth neglect both me and thee,

To invent and practise this one way to annihilate all three.