| John Donne (1572–1631). The Poems of John Donne. 1896. | | | | Letters to Several Personages | | To M[r]. I. P. |
| | | BLEST are your north parts, for all this long time | |
| My sun is with you; cold and dark ’s our clime; | |
| Heaven’s sun, which stay’d so long from us this year, | |
| Stay’d in your north, I think, for she was there; | |
| And hither by kind nature drawn from thence, | 5 |
| Here rages, chafes, and threatens pestilence. | |
| Yet I, as long as she from hence doth stay, | |
| Think this no south, no summer, nor no day. | |
| With thee my kind and unkind heart is run; | |
| There sacrifice it to that beauteous sun. | 10 |
| So may thy pastures with their flowery feasts, | |
| As suddenly as lard, fat thy lean beasts; | |
| So may thy woods oft poll’d, yet ever wear | |
| A green, and—when thee list 1—a golden hair; | |
| So may all thy sheep bring forth twins; and so | 15 |
| In chase and race may thy horse all out-go; | |
| So may thy love and courage ne’er be cold; | |
| Thy son ne’er ward; thy loved wife ne’er seem old. | |
| But mayst thou wish great things, and them attain, | |
| As thou tell’st her, and none but her, my pain. | 20 |
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