Read "A Fever" by John Donne online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
O! Do not die, for I shall hate / All women so, when thou art gone, / That thee I shall not celebrate, / When I remember thou wast one.
But yet thou canst not die, I know; / To leave this world behind, is death; / But when thou from this world wilt go, / The whole world vapours with thy breath.
Or if, when thou, the world's soul, go'st, / It stay, 'tis but thy carcase then; / The fairest woman, but thy ghost, / But corrupt worms, the worthiest men.
O wrangling schools, that search what fire / Shall burn this world, had none the wit / Unto this knowledge to aspire, / That this her fever might be it?
And yet she cannot waste by this, / Nor long bear this torturing wrong, / For more corruption needful is, / To fuel such a fever long.
These burning fits but meteors be, / Whose matter in thee is soon spent; / Thy beauty, and all parts, which are thee, / Are unchangeable firmament.
Yet 'twas of my mind, seizing thee, / Though it in thee cannot persèver; / For I had rather owner be / Of thee one hour, than all else ever.