Read "The Bait" by John Donne online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Come live with me, and be my love, / And we will some new pleasures prove / Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, / With silken lines and silver hooks.
There will the river whisp'ring run / Warm'd by thy eyes, more than the sun; / And there th' enamour'd fish will stay, / Begging themselves they may betray.
When thou wilt swim in that live bath, / Each fish, which every channel hath, / Will amorously to thee swim, / Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.
If thou, to be so seen, be'st loth, / By sun or moon, thou dark'nest both, / And if myself have leave to see, / I need not their light, having thee.
Let others freeze with angling reeds, / And cut their legs with shells and weeds, / Or treacherously poor fish beset, / With strangling snare, or windowy net.
Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest / The bedded fish in banks out-wrest; / Or curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies, / Bewitch poor fishes' wand'ring eyes.
For thee, thou need'st no such deceit, / For thou thyself art thine own bait: / That fish, that is not catch'd thereby, / Alas! is wiser far than I.