Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

Poems of Sentiment: II. Life

The Will

John Donne (1572–1631)

BEFORE I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe,

Great Love, some legacies: here I bequeathe

Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see,

If they be blind, then, Love, I give them thee;

My tongue to Fame, to embassadors my ears;

To women, or the sea, my tears;

Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore

By making me serve her who had twenty more,

That I should give to none, but such as had too much before.

My constancy I to the planets give;

My truth to them who at the court do live;

Mine ingenuity and openness

To Jesuits; to buffoons my pensiveness;

My silence to any who abroad have been;

My money to a Capuchin.

Thou, Love, taught’st me, by appointing me

To love there, where no love received can be,

Only to give to such as have an incapacity.

My faith I give to Roman Catholics;

All my good works unto the schismatics

Of Amsterdam; my best civility

And courtship to an University;

My modesty I give to shoulders bare;

My patience let gamesters share.

Thou, Love, taught’st me, by making me

Love her, that holds my love disparity,

Only to give to those that count my gifts indignity.

I give my reputatiòn to those

Which were my friends; mine industry to foes;

To schoolmen I bequeathe my doubtfulness;

My sickness to physicians, or excess;

To Nature all that I in rhyme have writ;

And to my company my wit.

Thou, Love, by making me adore

Her, who begot this love in me before,

Taught’st me to make, as though I gave, when I do but restore.

To him, for whom the passing-bell next tolls,

I give my physic-books; my written rolls

Of moral counsels I to Bedlam give:

My brazen medals unto them which live

In want of bread; to them which pass among

All foreigners, mine English tongue.

Thou, Love, by making me love one

Who thinks her friendship a fit portiòn

For younger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportion.

Therefore I ’ll give no more, but I ’ll undo

The world by dying; because Love dies too.

Then all your beauties will be no more worth

Than gold in mines, where none doth draw it forth;

And all your graces no more use shall have,

Than a sun-dial in a grave.

Thou, Love, taught’st me, by making me

Love her, who doth neglect both me and thee,

To invent and practise this one way to annihilate all three.