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John Donne

Stay, O Sweet

STAY, O sweet, and do not rise!
    The light that shines come 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
  And perish in their infancy.

  ’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?
  Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
  Should in despite of light keep us together.

  Light hath no tongue, but is all eye.
If it could speak as well as spy,
  This were the worst that it could say:—
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.

  Must business thee from hence remove?
Oh, that’s the worse disease of love!
  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.

Listen to this poem

Read by Annie Coleman Rothenberg · Source: Librivox.org

About the poet

John DonneJohn Donne
1573-1631

 
By the same poet
A Burnt Ship
The Flea
The Sun Rising
The Apparition
Lovers’ Infiniteness
The Good-Morrow
The Relic
A Lame Begger
That Time and Absence proves Rather helps than hurts to loves
Death
Song
The Ecstasy
The Dream
The Funeral
A Hymn to God the Father
 
Related books
John Donne at amazon.co.uk