Donne Poems

Question 1

Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee

Answer 1

The Flea

Question 2

Our marriage bed and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, we are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.

Answer 2

The Flea

Question 3

Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou
Find’st not thy self nor me the weaker now;
‘Tis true’ then learn how false fears be;
Just so much nonor, when thou yield’st to me

Answer 3

The Flea

Question 4

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then,
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

Answer 4

The Good-Morrow

Question 5

Which watch not one another out of fear’
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.

Answer 5

The Good-Morrow

Question 6

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp North, without declining West?

Answer 6

The Good-Morrow

Question 7

Why dost thou thus
Through windows and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?

Answer 7

The Sun Rising

Question 8

Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou thnk?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long;

Answer 8

The Sun Rising

Question 9

She is all states, and all princes I,
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honor’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.

Answer 9

The Sun Rising

Question 10

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

Answer 10

The Sun Rising

Question 11

I can love both fair and brown,
Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays,
Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays

Answer 11

The Indifferent

Question 12

Will no other vice content you?
Will it not serve your turn to do as did your mothers?
Or have you all old vices spent, and now would find out others?

Answer 12

The Indifferent

Question 13

Venus heard me sigh this song,
And by love’s sweetest part, variety, she swore,
She heard not this till now; and that it should be so no more.

Answer 13

The Indifferent

Question 14

For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune, flout,

Answer 14

The Canonization

Question 15

Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.

Answer 15

The Canonization

Question 16

Call us what you will, we are made such by love’
Call her one, me another fly,
We’re tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find the eagle and the dove.

Answer 16

The Canonization

Question 17

So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

Answer 17

The Canonization

Question 18

We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;

Answer 18

The Canonization

Question 19

And thus invoke us: You whom reverend love
Made one another’s hermitage;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;

Answer 19

The Canonization

Question 20

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove,
Of golden sands and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.

Answer 20

The Bait

Question 21

And there the enamored fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.

Answer 21

The Bait

Question 22

When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath

Answer 22

The Bait

Question 23

For thee need’st no such deceit,
Four thou thyself art thine own ___;
That fish that is not catched thereby,
Alas, is wiser far than I.

Answer 23

The Bait

Question 24

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No;

Answer 24

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

Question 25

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.

Answer 25

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

Question 26

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 th’ other do.

Answer 26

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

Question 27

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

Answer 27

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

Question 28

Where, like a pillow on a bed,
A pregnant bank swelled up to rest
The violet’s reclining head,
Sat we two, one another’s best.

Answer 28

The Ecstasy

Question 29

And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;

Answer 29

The Ecstasy

Question 29

Our hands were firmly cemented
With a fast balm which thence did spring,
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string;

Answer 29

The Ecstasy

Question 30

A single violet transplant,
The strength, the color, and the size
(All which before was poor and scant)
Redoubles still, and multiplies.

Answer 30

The Ecstasy

Question 31

We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are composed and made,
For th’ atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade

Answer 31

The Ecstasy

Question 32

We owe them thanks because they thus
Did us to us at first convey,
Yielded their forces, sense, to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.

Answer 32

The Ecstasy

Question 33

And think that there a loving couple lies,
Who thought that this device might be some way
To make their souls, at the last busy day,
Meet at this grave, and make a little stay?

Answer 33

The Relic

Question 34

All women shall adore us, and some men;
And since at such times, miracles are sought
I would have that age by this paper taught
What miracles we harmless lovers wrought.

Answer 34

The Relic

Question 35

First, we loved well and faithfully,
Yet knew not what we loved, nor why,
Difference of sex no more we knew
Than our guardian angels do;

Answer 35

The Relic

Question 36

Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labor, I in labor lie.

Answer 36

To His Mistress Going to Bed

Question 37

Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime
Tells me from you that now it is bed-time.

Answer 37

To His Mistress Going to Bed

Question 38

To teach thee, I am naked first; why then
What need’st thou have more covering that a man?

Answer 38

To His Mistress Going to Bed