On his Mistress by John Donne

By our first strange and fatal interview, / By all desires which thereof did ensue, / By our long starving hopes, by that remorse / Which my words' masculine persuasive force / Begot in thee, and by the memory / Of hurts, which spies and rivals threaten'd me, / I calmly beg. But by thy father's wrath, / By all pains, which want and divorcement hath, / I conjure thee, and all the oaths which I / And thou have sworn to seal joint constancy, / Here I unswear, and overswear them thus; / Thou shalt not love by ways so dangerous. / Temper, O fair love, love's impetuous rage; / Be my true mistress still, not my feign'd page. / I'll go, and, by thy kind leave, leave behind / Thee, only worthy to nurse in my mind / Thirst to come back; O! if thou die before, / My soul from other lands to thee shall soar. / Thy else almighty beauty cannot move / Rage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love, / Nor tame wild Boreas' harshness; thou hast read / How roughly he in pieces shivered / Fair Orithea, whom he swore he loved. / Fall ill or good, 'tis madness to have proved / Dangers unurged; feed on this flattery, / That absent lovers one in th' other be. / Dissemble nothing, not a boy, nor change / Thy body's habit, nor mind; be not strange / To thyself only. All will spy in thy face / A blushing womanly discovering grace. / Richly clothed apes are call'd apes, and as soon / Eclipsed as bright, we call the moon the moon. / Men of France, changeable chameleons, / Spitals of diseases, shops of fashions, / Love's fuellers, and the rightest company / Of players, which upon the world's stage be, / Will quickly know thee, and no less, alas! / Th' indifferent Italian, as we pass / His warm land, well content to think thee page, / Will hunt thee with such lust, and hideous rage, / As Lot's fair guests were vex'd. But none of these, / Nor spongy hydroptic Dutch shall thee displease, / If thou stay here. O stay here, for for thee / England is only a worthy gallery, / To walk in expectation, till from thence / Our greatest king call thee to his presence. / When I am gone, dream me some happiness; / Nor let thy looks our long-hid love confess; / Nor praise, nor dispraise me, nor bless nor curse / Openly love's force, nor in bed fright thy nurse / With midnight's startings, crying out, O! O! / Nurse, O! my love is slain; I saw him go / O'er the white Alps alone; I saw him, I, / Assail'd, fight, taken, stabb'd, bleed, fall, and die / Augur me better chance, except dread Jove / Think it enough for me to have had thy love.