English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 173. Stay, O Sweet |
| | | John Donne (1573–1631) |
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| STAY, O sweet, and do not rise! | |
| The light that shines comes from thine eyes; | |
| The day breaks not: it is my heart, | |
| Because that you and I must part. | |
| Stay! or else my joys will die, | 5 |
| And perish in their infancy. | |
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| ’Tis true, ’tis day: what though it be? | |
| O, wilt thou therefore rise from me? | |
| Why should we rise because ’tis light? | |
| Did we lie down because ’twas night? | 10 |
| Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither, | |
| Should in despite of light keep us together. | |
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| Light hath no tongue, but is all eye. | |
| If it could speak as well as spy, | |
| This were the worst that it could say:— | 15 |
| That, being well, I fain would stay, | |
| And that I lov’d my heart and honour so, | |
| That I would not from him, that had them, go. | |
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| Must business thee from hence remove? | |
| Oh, that’s the worse disease of love! | 20 |
| The poor, the fool, the false, love can | |
| Admit, but not the busied man. | |
| He, which hath business, and makes love, doth do | |
| Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo. | |
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