A Valediction Forbbiding Mourning
As virtuous men pass midly away,
and whisper to their souls to go,
whilst some of their sad freinds do say,
"now his breath goes", and some say: "no".
So lets 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 harms and fears,
men reckon 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
of 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 compasse are two:
thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
to move, but doth, if the other do;
and though it in the centre sit,
yet when the other far doth roam,
it leans and hearkens after it,
and grow 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.
