Read "A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day, being the Shortest Day" by John Donne online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's, / Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks; / The sun is spent, and now his flasks / Send forth light squibs, no constant rays; / The world's whole sap is sunk; / The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk, / Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk, / Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh, / Compared with me, who am their epitaph.
Study me then, you who shall lovers be / At the next world, that is, at the next spring; / For I am a very dead thing, / In whom Love wrought new alchemy. / For his art did express / A quintessence even from nothingness, / From dull privations, and lean emptiness; / He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot / Of absence, darkness, death-things which are not.