Read "An Epithalamion, or Marriage Song on the Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine being Married on St. Valentine's Day" by John Donne online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Hail Bishop Valentine, whose day this is; / All the air is thy diocese, / And all the chirping choristers / And other birds are thy parishioners; / Thou marriest every year / The lyric lark, and the grave whispering dove, / The sparrow that neglects his life for love, / The household bird with the red stomacher; / Thou makest the blackbird speed as soon, / As doth the goldfinch, or the halcyon; / The husband cock looks out, and straight is sped, / And meets his wife, which brings her featherbed. / This day more cheerfully than ever shine; / This day, which might inflame thyself, old Valentine.
Till now, thou warm'd'st with multiplying loves / Two larks, two sparrows, or two doves; / All that is nothing unto this; / For thou this day couplest two phoenixes; / Thou makst a taper see / What the sun never saw, and what the ark / -Which was of fowls and beasts the cage and park- / Did not contain, one bed contains, through thee; / Two phoenixes, whose joined breasts / Are unto one another mutual nests, / Where motion kindles such fires as shall give / Young phoenixes, and yet the old shall live; / Whose love and courage never shall decline, / But make the whole year through, thy day, O Valentine.