Read "Community" by John Donne online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Good we must love, and must hate ill, / For ill is ill, and good good still; / But there are things indifferent, / Which we may neither hate, nor love, / But one, and then another prove, / As we shall find our fancy bent.
If then at first wise Nature had / Made women either good or bad, / Then some we might hate, and some choose; / But since she did them so create, / That we may neither love, nor hate, / Only this rests, all all may use.
If they were good, it would be seen; / Good is as visible as green, / And to all eyes itself betrays. / If they were bad, they could not last; / Bad doth itself and others waste; / So they deserve nor blame, nor praise.
But they are ours as fruits are ours; / He that but tastes, he that devours, / And he that leaves all, doth as well; / Changed loves are but changed sorts of meat; / And when he hath the kernel eat, / Who doth not fling away the shell?