FOR God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout,
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his Honour, or his Grace,
Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face
Contemplate; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.
Alas, alas, who's injured by my love?
What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?
Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.
Call's what you will, we are made such by love;
Call her one, me another fly,
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find th' eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us; we two being one, are it;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.
We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tomb or hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for love;
And thus invoke us; "You, whom reverend love
Made one another's hermitage;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes;
(So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize,)
Countries, Towns, Courts: Beg from above
A pattern of your love."
- John Donne
I loveee John Donne. When I met with my advisor senior year and she asked me my favorite poet and I said John Donne, she gave me a terrible look and asked if I had any interest in modern poetry. STFU!
ReplyDeleteModern poetry is more often than not overrated. Unless poems prove they can withstand the test of time, I generally write them off as personal whining and emotional drivel. Shel Silverstein was pretty great, though.
ReplyDeleteAnd let's just be honest- few writing advisors know anything outside of what's published in the New Yorker, which is a shame. I lost count of the number of times mine referred me to read John Updike (who I had, in fact, read- namely for writing classes in which other advisors sycophantically worshiped his celebrity and the way in which he mastered the short story/was actually able to make a living wage by his writing/was able to tell the same story 1,000 different ways, etc.).