As virtuous men pass mildly away, <br /> And whisper to their souls, to go, <br />Whilst some of their sad friends do say, <br /> 'The breath goes now,' and some say, 'No:' <br /> <br />So let us melt, and make no noise, <br /> No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; <br />'Twere profanation of our joys <br /> To tell the laity our love. <br /> <br />Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears; <br /> Men reckon what it did, and meant; <br />But trepidation of the spheres, <br /> Though greater far, is innocent. <br /> <br />Dull sublunary lovers' love <br /> (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit <br />Absence, because it doth remove <br /> Those things which elemented it. <br /> <br />But we by a love so much refin'd, <br /> That ourselves know not what it is, <br />Inter-assured of the mind, <br /> Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. <br /> <br />Our two souls therefore, which are one, <br /> Though I must go, endure not yet <br />A breach, but an expansion, <br /> Like gold to airy thinness beat. <br /> <br />If they be two, they are two so <br /> As stiff twin compasses are two; <br />Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show <br /> To move, but doth, if the' other do. <br /> <br />And though it in the centre sit, <br /> Yet when the other far doth roam, <br />It leans, and hearkens after it, <br /> And grows erect, as that comes home. <br /> <br />Such wilt thou be to me, who must <br /> Like th' other foot, obliquely run; <br />Thy firmness makes my circle just, <br /> And makes me end, where I begun.<br /><br />John Donne<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-valediction-forbidding-mourning/
