| T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22. | | | | The Indifferent | | By John Donne (1572–1631) |
| | (From Poems, 1633)
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; | |
| 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 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 through you, | |
| Grow your fix’d subject, because you are true? | | | | |
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