| John Donne (1572–1631). The Poems of John Donne. 1896. | | | | Songs and Sonnets | | The Indifferent |
| | | I CAN love both fair and brown; | |
| Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays; | |
| Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays; 1 | |
| Her whom the country form’d, and whom the town; | |
| Her who believes, and her who tries; | 5 |
| Her who still weeps with spongy eyes, | |
| And her who is dry cork, and never cries. | |
| I can love her, and her, and you, and you; | |
| I can love any, so she be not true. | |
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| Will no other vice content you? | 10 |
| Will it not serve your turn to do as did your mothers? | |
| Or have you all old vices spent 2 and now would find out others? | |
| Or doth a fear that men are true torment you? | |
| O we are not, be not you so; | |
| Let me—and do you—twenty know; | 15 |
| Rob me, but bind me not, and let me go. | |
| Must I, who came to travel 3 thorough you, | |
| Grow your fix’d subject, because you are true? | |
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| Venus heard me sigh this song; 4 | |
| And by love’s sweetest part, 5 variety, she swore, | 20 |
| She heard not this till now; it 6 should be so no more. | |
| She went, examined, and return’d ere long, | |
| And said, “Alas! some two or three | |
| Poor heretics in love there be, | |
| Which think to stablish dangerous constancy. | 25 |
| But I have told them, ‘Since you will be true, | |
| You shall be true to them who’re false to you.’” | |
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