Read "Love's Alchemy" by John Donne online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Some that have deeper digg'd love's mine than I, / Say, where his centric happiness doth lie. / I have loved, and got, and told, / But should I love, get, tell, till I were old, / I should not find that hidden mystery. / O! 'tis imposture all; / And as no chemic yet th' elixir got, / But glorifies his pregnant pot, / If by the way to him befall / Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal, / So, lovers dream a rich and long delight, / But get a winter-seeming summer's night.
Our ease, our thrift, our honour, and our day, / Shall we for this vain bubble's shadow pay? / Ends love in this, that my man / Can be as happy as I can, if he can / Endure the short scorn of a bridegroom's play? / That loving wretch that swears, / 'Tis not the bodies marry, but the minds, / Which he in her angelic finds, / Would swear as justly, that he hears, / In that day's rude hoarse minstrelsy, the spheres. / Hope not for mind in women; at their best, / Sweetness and wit they are, but mummy, possess'd.