Read "O, Let me not Serve so, as those Men Serve" by John Donne online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
O, let me not serve so, as those men serve, / Whom honour's smokes at once fatten and starve, / Poorly enrich'd with great men's words or looks; / Nor so write my name in thy loving books / As those idolatrous flatterers, which still / Their princes' style with many realms fulfil, / Whence they no tribute have, and where no sway. / Such services I offer as shall pay / Themselves; I hate dead names. O, then let me / Favourite in ordinary, or no favourite be. / When my soul was in her own body sheathed, / Not yet by oaths betroth'd, nor kisses breathed / Into my purgatory, faithless thee, / Thy heart seemed wax, and steel thy constancy. / So careless flowers strew'd on the water's face / The curled whirlpools suck, smack, and embrace, / Yet drown them; so the taper's beamy eye / Amorously twinkling beckons the giddy fly, / Yet burns his wings; and such the devil is, / Scarce visiting them who are entirely his. / When I behold a stream, which from the spring / Doth with doubtful melodious murmuring, / Or in a speechless slumber, calmly ride / Her wedded channel's bosom, and there chide, / And bend her brows, and swell, if any bough / Do but stoop down to kiss her utmost brow; / Yet, if her often gnawing kisses win / The traitorous banks to gape, and let her in, / She rusheth violently, and doth divorce / Her from her native and her long-kept course, / And roars, and braves it, and in gallant scorn, / In flattering eddies promising return, / She flouts her channel, which thenceforth is dry; / Then say I; "That is she, and this am I. " / Yet let not thy deep bitterness beget / Careless despair in me, for that will whet / My mind to scorn; and O, love dull'd with pain / Was ne'er so wise, nor well arm'd, as disdain. / Then with new eyes I shall survey thee, and spy / Death in thy cheeks, and darkness in thine eye, / Though hope bred faith and love; thus taught, I shall, / As nations do from Rome, from thy love fall; / My hate shall outgrow thine, and utterly / I will renounce thy dalliance; and when I / Am the recusant, in that resolute state / What hurts it me to be excommunicate?