The tears of lovers are always of great poetical account; but Donne has extended them into worlds. If the lines are not easily understood, they may be read again.

On a round ball

A workman, that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,

And quickly make that which was nothing all.
So doth each tear,

Which thee doth wear,

A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,
Till thy tears mixt with mine do overflow

This world, by waters sent from thee my heaven
dissolved so.

On reading the following lines, the reader may perhaps cry out- Confusion worse confounded.

Here lies a she sun, and a he moon here,
She gives the best light to his sphere,
Or each is both, and all, and so

They unto one another nothing owe.

DONNE.

Who but Donne would have thought that a good man is a telescope?

Though God be our true glass through which we see
All, since the being of all things is he,

Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive
Things in proportion fit, by perspective

Deeds of good men; for by their living here,
Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near.

Who

Who would imagine it possible that in a very few lines so many remote ideas could be brought together?

Since 'tis my doom, Love's undershrieve,

Why this reprieve?

Why doth my she advowson fly
Incumbency?

To sell thyself dost thou intend
By candles end,

And hold the contrast thus in doubt,
Life's taper out?

Think but how soon the market fails,
Your sex lives faster than the males;
And if to measure age's span,

The sober Julian were th' account of man,

Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian.

CLEIVELAND.

OF enormous and disgusting hyperboles, these

may be examples:

By every wind that comes this way,

Send me at least a sigh or two,

Such and so many I'll repay

As shall themselves make winds to get to you.

In tears I'll waste these eyes,

By Love so vainly fed;

COWLEY.

So lust of old the Deluge punished.

COWLEY.

All arm'd in brass, the richest dress of war,
(A dismal glorious sight!) he shone afar.
The sun himself started with sudden fright,
To see his beams return so dismal bright.

COWLEY.
An

An universal consternation:

His bloody eyes he hurls round, his sharp paws
Tear up the ground; then runs he wild about,
Lashing his angry tail and roaring out.

Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there;
Trees, though no wind is stirring, shake with fear;
Silence and horror fill the place around;

Echo itself dares scarce repeat the sound.

COWLEY.

THEIR fictions were often violent and unnatural. Of his Mistress bathing.

The fish around her crowded, as they do

To the false light that treacherous fishers shew,
And all with as much ease might taken be,

As she at first took me ;

For ne'er did light so clear

Among the waves appear,

Though every night the sun himself set there.

COWLEY.

The poetical effect of a lover's name upon glass :

My name engrav'd herein

Doth contribute my firmness to this glass;

Which, ever since that charm, hath been
As hard as that which grav'd it was.

DONNE.

THEIR conceits were sentiments slight and

trifling.

On an inconstant woman:

He enjoys the calmy sunshine now,

And no breath stirring hears,

In the clear heaven of thy brow,

No smallest cloud appears.

He

He sees thee gentle, fair and gay,

And trusts the faithless April of thy May.

COWLEY.

Upon a paper written with the juice of lemon,

and read by the fire:

Nothing yet in thee is seen,

But when a genial heat warms thee within,
A new-born wood of various lines there grows;
Here buds an L, and there a B,

Here spouts a V, and there a T,
And all the flourishing letters stand in rows.

COWLEY.

As they sought only for novelty, they did not much enquire whether their allusions were to things high or low, elegant or gross: whether they compared the little to the great, or the great to the little.

Physick and Chirurgery for a Lover.
Gently, ah gently, madam, touch

The wound, which you yourself have made;
That pain must needs be very much,
Which makes me of your hand afraid.
Cordials of pity give me now,
For I too weak of purgings grow.

The World and a Clock.

COWLEY.

Mahol th' inferior world's fantastic face
Thro' all the turns of matter's maze did trace;
Great Nature's well-set clock in pieces took;
On all the springs and smallest wheels did look
Of life and motion, and with equal art
Made up the whole again of every part.

COWLEY.

A coal

A coal-pit has not often found its poet; but, that it may not want its due honour, Cleiveland has ralleled it with the Sun:

The moderate value of our guiltless ore
Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore ;
Yet why should hallow'd vestal's sacred shrine
Deserve more honour than a flaming mine?
These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be,
Than a few embers, for a deity.

Had he our pits, the Persian would admire
No sun, but warm's devotion at our fire:
He'd leave the trotting whipster, and prefer
Our profound Vulcan 'bove that waggoner.
For wants he heat, or light? or would have store
Of both? 'tis here: and what can suns give more?
Nay, what's the sun but, in a different name,
A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame!
Then let this truth reciprocally run,

The sun's heaven's coalery, and coals our sun.

Death, a Voyage:

No family

E'er rigg'd a soul for Heaven's discovery,
With whom more venturers might boldly dare
Venture their stakes, with him in joy to share.

pa

DONNE.

THEIR thoughts and expressions were sometimes grossly absurd, and such as no figures or licence can reconcile to the understanding.

A Lover neither dead nor alive:

Then down I laid my head

Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead,
And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled;

Ah,