Poem by
John Donne
All kings, and all their favourites,
All glory of honours, beauties, wits,
The sin it self, which makes time, as they
pass,
Is elder by a year now than it was
When thou and I first one another saw.
All other things to their destruction draw
Only our love hath no decay;
This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday;
Running it never runs from us away,
But truly keeps his first, last everlasting day.
Two graves must hide thine and my corse;
If one might, death were no divorce.
Alas! as well as other princes, we
--Who prince enough in one another be--
Must leave at last in death these eyes and
ears,
Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears;
But souls where nothing dwells but love
--All other thoughts being inmates--then
shall prove
This or a love increased there above,
When bodies to their graves, souls from
their graves remove.
And then we shall be throughly blest;
But now no more than all the rest.
There upon earth we're kings, and none
but we
can be such kinds, nor of such subjects
be.
Who is so safe as we? where none can do
Treason to be us, except one of us two.
True and false fears let us refrain,
Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
Years and years unto years, till we attain
To write threescore; this is the second of our reign.