His Picture by John Donne

Here take my picture; though I bid farewell, / Thine, in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell. / 'Tis like me now, but I dead, 'twill be more, / When we are shadows both, than 'twas before. / When weatherbeaten I come back; my hand / Perhaps with rude oars torn, or sunbeams tann'd, / My face and breast of haircloth, and my head / With care's harsh sudden hoariness o'erspread, / My body a sack of bones, broken within, / And powder's blue stains scatter'd on my skin; / If rival fools tax thee to have loved a man, / So foul and coarse, as, O! I may seem then, / This shall say what I was; and thou shalt say, / "Do his hurts reach me? doth my worth decay? / Or do they reach his judging mind, that he / Should now love less, what he did love to see? / That which in him was fair and delicate, / Was but the milk, which in love's childish state / Did nurse it; who now is grown strong enough / To feed on that, which to weak tastes seems tough. "