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Post by Tamrin on Aug 15, 2009 12:34:49 GMT 10
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning[Poem by John Donne - Georgetown College - Linked above] As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, While some of their sad friends do say, "The breath goes now," and some say "No";
So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods nor sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love.
Moving of the earth brings harm and fears: Men recon what it did and meant; But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it.
But we, by a love so much refined That ourselves know not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind Care less eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls, therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth if the other do.
And though it in the center sit, Yet, when the other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it And grows erect as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must Like the other foot obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun. [/size] [/center]
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