The Canonization
John Donne
1572 to 1631
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For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
My five hairs, or ruined fortune flout,
With wealth your state, mind with arts improve,
Take you a course, get a place,
Observe his honor, or his grace,
Or king's real, or his stampèd 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 drowned?
Who says my tears have overflowed his ground?
did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did heats which my veins fill
Add one more to plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I love.
Call us what you will, we are made by love;
Call her one, me another fly,
We're too, and at our own cost die,
And we us find the eagle and the dove.
The phoenix hath more wit
By us; we two being one, it.
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by love.
We can die by it, if not live love,
And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our be, it will be fit for verse;
And if piece of chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets rooms;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall
Us canonized for Love.
And thus invoke us: "You, reverend love
Made one another's hermitage;
You, to whom was peace, that now is rage;
Who did the world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of eyes
(So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That did all to you epitomize)
Countries, towns, courts: beg above
A pattern of your love!"