Elegy on Mistress Boulstred by John Donne

Death I recant, and say, "Unsaid by me, / Whate'er hath slipp'd, that might diminish thee. / Spiritual treason, atheism" 'tis to say / That any can thy summons disobey. / Th' earth's face is but thy table; there are set / Plants, cattle, men, dishes for death to eat. / In a rude hunger now he millions draws / Into his bloody, or plaguy, or starved jaws. / Now he will seem to spare, and doth more waste, / Eating the best first, well preserved to last. / Now wantonly he spoils, and eats us not, / But breaks off friends, and lets us piecemeal rot. / Nor will this earth serve him; he sinks the deep / Where harmless fish monastic silence keep; / Who-were Death dead-by roes of living sand / Might sponge that element, and make it land. / He rounds the air, and breaks the hymnic notes / In birds', heaven's choristers, organic throats; / Which, if they did not die, might seem to be / A tenth rank in the heavenly hierarchy. / O strong and long-lived death, how camest thou in? / And how without creation didst begin? / Thou hast, and shalt see dead, before thou diest, / All the four Monarchies, and Antichrist. / How could I think thee nothing, that see now / In all this All nothing else is, but thou? / Our births and lives, vices and virtues, be / Wasteful consumptions, and degrees of thee. / For we, to live, our bellows wear and breath, / Nor are we mortal, dying, dead, but death. / And though thou be'st, O mighty bird of prey, / So much reclaim'd by God, that thou must lay / All that thou kill'st at His feet, yet doth He / Reserve but few, and leaves the most to thee. / And of those few now thou hast overthrown / One whom thy blow makes, not ours, nor thine own. / She was more storeys high; hopeless to come / To her soul, thou hast offer'd at her lower room. / Her soul and body was a king and court; / But thou hast both of captain miss'd and fort. / As houses fall not, though the kings remove, / Bodies of saints rest for their souls above. / Death gets 'twixt souls and bodies such a place / As sin insinuates 'twixt just men and grace; / Both work a separation, no divorce. / Her soul is gone to usher up her corse, / Which shall be almost another soul-for there / Bodies are purer than best souls are here. / Because in her, her virtues did outgo / Her years, would'st thou, O emulous death, do so, / And kill her young to thy loss? must the cost / Of beauty and wit, apt to do harm, be lost? / What though thou found'st her proof 'gainst sins of youth? / O, every age a diverse sin pursueth. / Thou should'st have stayed, and taken better hold. / Shortly, ambitious; covetous, when old, / She might have proved; and such devotion / Might once have stray'd to superstition. / If all her virtues must have grown, yet might / Abundant virtue have bred a proud delight. / Had she persever'd just, there would have been / Some that would sin, misthinking she did sin. / Such as would call her friendship, love, and feign / To sociableness, a name profane, / Or sin by tempting, or, not daring that, / By wishing, though they never told her what. / Thus mightst thou have slain more souls had'st thou not cross'd / Thyself, and to triumph, thine army lost. / Yet though these ways be lost, thou hast left one, / Which is, immoderate grief that she is gone. / But we may 'scape that sin, yet weep as much; / Our tears are due because we are not such. / Some tears, that knot of friends, her death must cost, / Because the chain is broke, but no link lost.