John Donne - Delphi Poets Series Read Online Free

subsidies,
       Forsake him who on them relies;
And for the cause, honour, or conscience give;
Chimeras vain as they or their prerogative.
    Here statesmen — or of them, they which can read —
    May of their occupation find the grounds;
    Love, and their art, alike it deadly wounds,
If to consider what ‘tis, one proceed.
       In both they do excel
       Who the present govern well,
       Whose weakness none doth, or dares tell;
In this thy book, such will there something see,
As in the Bible some can find out alchemy.
    Thus vent thy thoughts; abroad I’ll study thee,
    As he removes far off, that great heights takes;
    How great love is, presence best trial makes,
But absence tries how long this love will be;
       To take a latitude
       Sun, or stars, are fitliest view’d
       At their brightest, but to conclude
Of longitudes, what other way have we,
But to mark when and where the dark eclipses be?

COMMUNITY.
    GOOD we must love, and must hate ill,
For ill is ill, and good good still;
    But there are things indifferent,
Which wee may neither hate, nor love,
But one, and then another prove,
    As we shall find our fancy bent.
    If then at first wise Nature had
Made women either good or bad,
    Then some wee might hate, and some choose;
But since she did them so create,
That we may neither love, nor hate,
    Only this rests, all all may use.
    If they were good it would be seen;
Good is as visible as green,
    And to all eyes itself betrays.
If they were bad, they could not last;
Bad doth itself, and others waste;
    So they deserve nor blame, nor praise.
    But they are ours as fruits are ours;
He that but tastes, he that devours,
    And he that leaves all, doth as well;
Changed loves are but changed sorts of meat;
And when he hath the kernel eat,
    Who doth not fling away the shell?

LOVE’S GROWTH.
    I SCARCE believe my love to be so pure
      As I had thought it was,
      Because it doth endure
Vicissitude, and season, as the grass;
Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring make it more.
    But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow
    With more, not only be no quintessence,
    But mix’d of all stuffs, vexing soul, or sense,
And of the sun his active vigour borrow,
Love’s not so pure, and abstract as they use
To say, which have no mistress but their Muse;
But as all else, being elemented too,
Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.
    And yet no greater, but more eminent,
      Love by the spring is grown;
      As in the firmament
Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown,
Gentle love deeds, as blossoms on a bough,
From love’s awakened root do bud out now.
    If, as in water stirr’d more circles be
    Produced by one, love such additions take,
    Those like so many spheres but one heaven make,
For they are all concentric unto thee;
And though each spring do add to love new heat,
As princes do in times of action get
New taxes, and remit them not in peace,
No winter shall abate this spring’s increase.

LOVE’S EXCHANGE.
    LOVE, any devil else but you
Would for a given soul give something too.
At court your fellows every day
Give th’ art of rhyming, huntsmanship, or play,
For them which were their own before;
Only I have nothing, which gave more,
But am, alas! by being lowly, lower.
    I ask no dispensation now,
To falsify a tear, or sigh, or vow;
I do not sue from thee to draw
A  non obstante on nature’s law;
These are prerogatives, they inhere
In thee and thine; none should forswear
Except that he Love’s minion were.
    Give me thy weakness, make me blind,
Both ways, as thou and thine, in eyes and mind;
Love, let me never know that this
Is love, or, that love childish is;
Let me not know that others know
That she knows my paines, lest that so
A tender shame make me mine own new woe.
    If thou give