and let me love

It's still April on the East Coast for another half hour, and so, my last poem of the month. What a fucking month. There's been a lot of bad, but there's been some good, too; the poetry made it a lot better than it could have been, especially this year. I wish I'd been able to keep up with other people's poetry posts more regularly, but I look forward to back-reading them, when I can. I'm not sad to see April go, and I'm looking forward to May, even though looking forward to things catches me up, sometimes, and the fact that time is moving forward just like normal still seems a little strange.

I've been circling around John Donne all month long, and I thought I would end with this one. It's a famous one, and I love it -- but then, there's not a lot of Donne that I don't love.

For Godsake hold your tongue, and let me love,
Or chide my palsie, or my gout,
My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout,
With wealth your state, your mind with Arts improve,
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his honour, or his grace,
Or the King's real, or his stamped face
Contemplate, what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.

Alas, alas, who's injur'd by my love?
What merchants ships have my sighs drown'd?
Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguie Bill?
Soldiers find wars, and Lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.

Call us what you will, wee are made such by love;
Call her one, me another fly,
We'are Tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And wee in us find the'Eagle and the dove,
The Phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us, we two being one, are it.
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit,
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

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;
And if no piece of Chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
As well a well wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us Canoniz'd for Love.

And thus invoke us; You whom reverend love
Made one another's hermitage;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage,
Who did the whole worlds soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes
So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize,
Countries, Townes, Courts: Beg from above
A pattern of our love.

—John Donne (1572-1631), 'The Canonization'.

I have three editions of Donne's poetry on my desk right now, and I typed this up from one of them and modernized the spelling to my own liking, because while I am just the sort of person who would actually go to the library and check out the Donne Variorum -- actually while typing this I have learned that there is an online version of the Donne Variorum, oh my god I love academics with internet -- I am also lazy, and this poem is this poem, gorgeous and heady and wild and lovely, whatever the spelling and punctuation.