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 Donne |
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 |