| John Donne (1572–1631). The Poems of John Donne. 1896. | | | | Songs and Sonnets | | Love’s Alchemy |
| | | SOME that have deeper digg’d love’s mine than I, | |
| Say, where his centric happiness doth lie. | |
| I have loved, and got, and told, | |
| But should I love, get, tell, till I were old, | |
| I should not find that hidden mystery. | 5 |
| O! ’tis imposture all; | |
| And as no chemic yet th’ elixir got, | |
| But glorifies his pregnant pot, | |
| If by the way to him befall | |
| Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal, | 10 |
| So, lovers dream a rich and long delight, | |
| But get a winter-seeming summer’s night. | |
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| Our ease, our thrift, our honour, and our day, | |
| Shall we for this vain bubble’s shadow pay? | |
| Ends love in this, that my man | 15 |
| Can be as happy as I can, if he can | |
| Endure the short scorn of a bridegroom’s play? | |
| That loving wretch that swears, | |
| ’Tis not the bodies marry, but the minds, | |
| Which he in her angelic finds, | 20 |
| Would swear as justly, that he hears, | |
| In that day’s rude hoarse minstrelsy, the spheres. | |
| Hope not for mind in women; at their best, | |
| Sweetness and wit they are, but mummy, possess’d. | | | | |
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