| |
| AS virtuous men pass mildly away, | |
| And whisper to their souls to go, | |
| Whilst some of their sad friends do say, | |
| “Now his breath goes,” 1 and some say, “No.” | |
| |
| So let us melt, and make no noise, | 5 |
| No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; | |
| ’Twere profanation of our joys | |
| To tell the laity our love. | |
| |
| Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears; | |
| Men reckon what it did, and meant; | 10 |
| But trepidation of the spheres, | |
| Though greater far, is innocent. | |
| |
| Dull sublunary lovers’ love | |
| —Whose soul is sense—cannot admit | |
| Of absence, ’cause 2 it doth remove | 15 |
| The thing 3 which elemented it. | |
| |
| But we by a love so far 4 refined, | |
| That ourselves know not what it is, | |
| Inter-assurèd of the mind, | |
| Care less eyes, lips and hands 5 to miss. | 20 |
| |
| Our two souls therefore, which are one, | |
| Though I must go, endure not yet | |
| A breach, but an expansion, | |
| Like gold to airy thinness beat. | |
| |
| If they be two, they are two so | 25 |
| As stiff twin compasses are two; | |
| Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show | |
| To move, but doth, if th’ other do. | |
| |
| And though it in the centre sit, | |
| Yet, when the other far doth roam, | 30 |
| It leans, and hearkens after it, | |
| And grows erect, as that comes home. | |
| |
| Such wilt thou be to me, who must, | |
| Like th’ other foot, obliquely run; | |
| Thy firmness makes my circle just, | 35 |
| And makes me end where I begun. | |
