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| ’TIS the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s, | |
| Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks; | |
| The sun is spent, and now his flasks | |
| Send forth light squibs, no constant rays; | |
| The world’s whole sap is sunk; | 5 |
| The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk, | |
| Whither, as to the bed’s-feet, life is shrunk, | |
| Dead and interr’d; yet all these seem to laugh, | |
| Compared with me, who am their epitaph. | |
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| Study me then, you who shall lovers be | 10 |
| At the next world, that is, at the next spring; | |
| For I am a very dead thing, 1 | |
| In whom Love wrought new alchemy. | |
| For his art did express | |
| A quintessence even from nothingness, | 15 |
| From dull privations, and lean emptiness; | |
| He ruin’d me, and I am re-begot | |
| Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not. | |
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| All others, from all things, draw all that’s good, | |
| Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have; | 20 |
| I, by Love’s limbec, am the grave | |
| Of all, that’s nothing. Oft a flood | |
| Have we two wept, and so | |
| Drown’d the whole world, us two; oft did we grow, | |
| To be two chaoses, when we did show | 25 |
| Care to aught else; and often absences | |
| Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses. | |
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| But I am by her death—which word wrongs her— | |
| Of the first nothing the elixir grown; | |
| Were I a man, that I were one | 30 |
| I needs must know; I should prefer, | |
| If I were any beast, | |
| Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest, | |
| And love; all, all some properties invest. | |
| If I an ordinary nothing were, | 35 |
| As shadow, a light, and body must be here. | |
| |
| But I am none; nor will my sun renew. | |
| You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun | |
| At this time to the Goat is run | |
| To fetch new lust, and give it you, | 40 |
| Enjoy your summer all, | |
| Since she enjoys her long night’s festival. | |
| Let me prepare towards her, and let me call | |
| This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this | |
| Both the year’s and the day’s deep midnight is. | 45 |
