| John Donne (1572–1631). The Poems of John Donne. 1896. | | | | Songs and Sonnets | | Farewell to Love |
| | | WHILST yet to prove | |
| I thought there was some deity in love, | |
| So did I reverence, and gave | |
| Worship; as atheists at their dying hour | |
| Call, what they cannot name, an unknown power, | 5 |
| As ignorantly did I crave. | |
| Thus when | |
| Things not yet known are coveted by men, | |
| Our desires give them fashion, and so | |
| As they wax lesser, fall, as they size, grow. | 10 |
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| But, from late fair, | |
| His highness sitting in a golden chair | |
| Is not less cared for after three days | |
| By children, than the thing which lovers so | |
| Blindly admire, and with such worship woo; | 15 |
| Being had, enjoying it decays; | |
| And thence, | |
| What before pleased them all, takes but one sense, | |
| And that so lamely, as it leaves behind | |
| A kind of sorrowing dullness to the mind. | 20 |
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| Ah, cannot we, | |
| As well as cocks and lions, jocund be | |
| After such pleasures, unless wise | |
| Nature decreed—since each such act, they say, | |
| Diminisheth the length of life a day— | 25 |
| This; as she would man should despise | |
| The sport, | |
| Because that other curse of being short, | |
| And only for a minute made to be | |
| Eager, desires to raise posterity. | 30 |
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| Since so, my mind | |
| Shall not desire what no man else can find; | |
| I’ll no more dote and run | |
| To pursue things which had endamaged me; | |
| And when I come where moving beauties be, | 35 |
| As men do when the summer’s sun | |
| Grows great, | |
| Though I admire their greatness, shun their heat. | |
| Each place can afford shadows; if all fail, | |
| ’Tis but applying worm-seed to the tail. | 40 | | | |
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