Air and angels selected poems john donne5/22/2023 ![]() ![]() Whilst thus to ballast love I thought, And so more steadily to have gone, With wares which would sink admiration, I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught Thy every hair for love to work upon Is much too much some fitter must be sought For, nor in nothing, nor in things Extreme, and scattering bright, can love inhere Then as an angel face and wings Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear, So thy love may be my love's sphere Just such disparity As is 'twixt air's and angels' purity, 'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be. But since my soul, whose child love is, Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do, More subtle than the parent is Love must not be, but take a body too And therefore what thou wert, and who, I bid Love ask, and now That it assume thy body, I allow, And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow. Twice or thrice had I loved thee, Before I knew thy face or name. Still when, to where thou wert, I came, Some lovely glorious nothing did I see. John Donne - Songs and Sonnets - A new freely downloadable text with a line by line prose equivalent. ![]() It is easy to see Donne as a love poet, in the tradition of love poets such as Bernard de Ventadour, Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarch an. John Donne was, Robert Graves said, a Muse poet, a poet who wrote passionately of the Muse. TWICE or thrice had I loved thee, Before I knew thy face or name So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be. A selection of the finest poems by British poet John Donne. ![]()
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