LOVE, any devil else but you <br />Would for a given soul give something too. <br />At court your fellows every day <br />Give th' art of rhyming, huntsmanship, or play, <br />For them which were their own before ; <br />Only I have nothing, which gave more, <br />But am, alas ! by being lowly, lower. <br /> <br />I ask no dispensation now, <br />To falsify a tear, or sigh, or vow ; <br />I do not sue from thee to draw <br />A non obstante on nature's law ; <br />These are prerogatives, they inhere <br />In thee and thine ; none should forswear <br />Except that he Love's minion were. <br /> <br />Give me thy weakness, make me blind, <br />Both ways, as thou and thine, in eyes and mind ; <br />Love, let me never know that this <br />Is love, or, that love childish is ; <br />Let me not know that others know <br />That she knows my paines, lest that so <br />A tender shame make me mine own new woe. <br /> <br />If thou give nothing, yet thou 'rt just, <br />Because I would not thy first motions trust ; <br />Small towns which stand stiff, till great shot <br />Enforce them, by war's law condition not ; <br />Such in Love's warfare is my case ; <br />I may not article for grace, <br />Having put Love at last to show this face. <br /> <br />This face, by which he could command <br />And change th' idolatry of any land, <br />This face, which, wheresoe'er it comes, <br />Can call vow'd men from cloisters, dead from tombs, <br />And melt both poles at once, and store <br />Deserts with cities, and make more <br />Mines in the earth, than quarries were before. <br /> <br />For this Love is enraged with me, <br />Yet kills not ; if I must example be <br />To future rebels, if th' unborn <br />Must learn by my being cut up and torn, <br />Kill, and dissect me, Love ; for this <br />Torture against thine own end is ; <br />Rack'd carcasses make ill anatomies.<br /><br />John Donne<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/love-s-exchange/
