Image of her whom I love, more than she, <br />Whose fair impression in my faithful heart <br />Makes me her medal, and makes her love me, <br />As Kings do coins, to which their stamps impart <br />The value: go, and take my heart from hence, <br />Which now is grown too great and good for me: <br />Honours oppress weak spirits, and our sense <br />Strong objects dull; the more, the less we see. <br /> <br />When you are gone, and Reason gone with you, <br />Then Fantasy is queen and soul, and all; <br />She can present joys meaner than you do; <br />Convenient, and more proportional. <br />So, if I dream I have you, I have you, <br />For, all our joys are but fantastical. <br />And so I 'scape the pain, for pain is true; <br />And sleep which locks up sense, doth lock out all. <br /> <br />After a such fruition I shall wake, <br />And, but the waking, nothing shall repent; <br />And shall to love more thankful sonnets make <br />Than if more honour, tears, and pains were spent. <br />But dearest heart, and dearer image, stay; <br />Alas, true joys at best are dream enough; <br />Though you stay here you pass too fast away: <br />For even at first life's taper is a snuff. <br /> <br />Filied with her love, may I be rather grown <br />Mad with much heart, than idiot with none.<br /><br />John Donne<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/elegy-x-the-dream/
