In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.

THE ANTISTROPHE, OR COUNTER-TURN Call, noble Lucius, then, for wine,

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And let thy looks with gladness shine; Accept this garland, plant it on thy head,

And think, nay know, thy Morison's not dead.
He leaped the present age,

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Possest with holy rage

To see that bright eternal day,

Of which we priests and poets say Such truths as we expect for happy men. And there he lives with memory, and Ben

THE EPODE, OR STAND

Jonson, who sung this of him, ere he went,
Himself, to rest,

Or taste a part of that full joy he meant
To have exprest

In this bright asterism:

Where it were friendship's schism,

Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry,

To separate these twi

Lights, the Dioscuri,

And keep the one half from his Harry.

But Fate doth so alternate the design,

Whilst that in heaven, this light on earth, must shine,

IV

THE STROPHE, OR TURN

And shine as you exalted are;

Two names of friendship, but one star

Of hearts the union; and those not by chance

Made, or indenture, or leased out t' advance

The profits for a time:

No pleasures vain did chime,

Of rhymes or riots, at your feasts,

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90

95

100

Orgies of drink or feigned protests;

But simple love of greatness and of good,

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That knits brave minds and manners more than blood.

THE ANTISTROPHE, OR COUNTER-TURN

This made you first to know the why

You liked, then after to apply

That liking, and approach so one the t' other,

Till either grew a portion of the other,

Each styled by his end,

The copy of his friend.

You lived to be the great sir-names

And titles by which all made claims

Unto the virtue: nothing perfect done
But as a Cary or a Morison.

THE EPODE, OR STAND

And such a force the fair example had

As they that saw

The good and durst not practise it were glad

That such a law

Was left yet to mankind;

Where they might read and find

Friendship, indeed, was written not in words,
And with the heart, not pen,

Of two so early men,

Whose lines her rolls were, and records;

Who, ere the first down bloomèd on the chin,
Had sowed these fruits and got the harvest in.

1629.

1640.

AN ELEGY

Fair friend, 't is true your beauties move

My heart to a respect

Too little to be paid with love,

Too great for your neglect.

I neither love nor yet am free;
For though the flame I find
Be not intense in the degree,
'Tis of the purest kind.

It little wants of love but pain:

Your beauty takes my sense;

And lest you should that price disdain,

My thoughts too feel the influence.

'Tis not a passion's first access,

Ready to multiply;

But, like love's calmest state, it is
Possest with victory.

It is like love to truth reduced,

All the false values gone

Which were created and induced

By fond imagination.

'Tis either fancy or 't is fate

To love you more than I:

I love you at your beauty's rate;
Less were an injury.

Like unstampt gold, I weigh each grace,

So that you may collect

Th' intrinsic value of your face

Safely from my respect.

And this respect would merit love,

Were not so fair a sight

Payment enough; for who dare move

Reward for his delight?

1640.

JOHN DONNE

SATIRES

FROM

SATIRE I

"Away, thou changeling motley humourist! Leave me; and in this standing wooden chest, Consorted with these few books, let me lie

In prison, and here be coffined when I die.

Nature's secretary, the philosopher;

Here are God's conduits, grave divines; and here

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And wily statesmen, which teach how to tie
The sinews of a city's mystic body;

Here gathering chroniclers; and by them stand

Giddy fantastic poets of each land.

IO

Shall I leave all this constant company,
And follow headlong, wild, uncertain thee?
First, swear by thy best love, here, in earnest-

If thou, which lovest all, canst love any best,-
Thou wilt not leave me in the middle street,

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Though some more spruce companion thou dost meet; Not though a captain do come in thy way,

Bright parcel-gilt with forty dead men's pay;

Not though a brisk, perfumed, pert courtier
Deign with a nod thy courtesy to answer;
Nor come a velvet justice with a long

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Great train of blue-coats, twelve or fourteen strong,
Wilt thou grin, or fawn on him, or prepare

A speech to court his beauteous son and heir.
For better or worse take me or leave me;

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Now we are in the street: he first of all,
Improvidently proud, creeps to the wall,
And, so imprisoned and hemmed in by me,
Sells for a little state high liberty.

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Yet though he cannot skip forth now to greet

Every fine, silken, painted fool we meet,
He them to him with amorous smiles allures,

And grins, smacks, shrugs, and such an itch endures

As 'prentices or school-boys, which do know

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Of some gay sport abroad yet dare not go.

And as fiddlers stop lowest at highest sound,

So to the most brave stoops he nighest the ground;
But to a grave man he doth move no more

Than the wise politic horse would heretofore,
Or thou, O elephant, or ape, wilt do

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When any names the king of Spain to you.

Now leaps he upright, jogs me, and cries, "Do you see Yonder well-favoured youth?" "Which?" "Oh, 't is he That dances so divinely." "O," said I,

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"Stand still; must you dance here for company?"

He drooped; we went, till one which did excel
Th' Indians in drinking his tobacco well

Met us; they talked; I whispered, "Let us go, 'T may be you smell him not; truly I do."

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He hears not me, but on the other side

A many-coloured peacock having spied,

Leaves him and me. I for my lost sheep stay;
He follows, overtakes, goes on the way,

Saying, "Him whom I last left, all repute

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For his device in handsoming a suit,

To judge of lace, pink, panes, print, cut, and pleat,
Of all the court to have the best conceit."

"Our dull comedians want him, let him go;

But O, God strengthen thee, why stopp'st thou so?"

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"Why!" "Hath he travelled long?" "No; but to me,
Which understand none, he doth seem to be
Perfect French and Italian.” I replied,

"So is the pox." He answered not, but spied

More men of sort, of parts and qualities.
At last his love he in a window spies,

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And, like light dew exhaled, he flings from me,
Violently ravished to his lechery:

Many were there; he could command no more;
He quarrelled, fought, bled, and, turned out of door,
Directly came to me, hanging the head,

And constantly a while must keep his bed.

By 1593.

THE INDIFFERENT

1633.

I can love both fair and brown;

Her whom abundance melts and her whom want betrays; Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays; Her whom the country formed, and whom the town;

Her who believes, and her who tries;

Her who still weeps with spongy eyes,
And her who is dry cork and never cries.

I can love her, and her, and you, and you;

I can love any, so she be not true.

Will no other vice content you?

Will it not serve your turn to do as did your mothers?

Or have you all old vices spent and now would find out

others?

Or doth a fear that men are true torment you?

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ΙΟ