Read "The Dream: Image of her whom I Love, more than She" by John Donne online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Image of her whom I love, more than she, / Whose fair impression in my faithful heart / Makes me her medal, and makes her love me, / As kings do coins, to which their stamps impart / The value; go, and take my heart from hence, / Which now is grown too great and good for me. / Honours oppress weak spirits, and our sense / Strong objects dull; the more, the less we see. / When you are gone, and reason gone with you, / Then fantasy is queen and soul, and all; / She can present joys meaner than you do, / Convenient, and more proportional. / So, if I dream I have you, I have you, / For all our joys are but fantastical; / And so I 'scape the pain, for pain is true; / And sleep, which locks up sense, doth lock out all. / After a such fruition I shall wake, / And, but the waking, nothing shall repent; / And shall to love more thankful sonnets make, / Than if more honour, tears, and pains were spent. / But, dearest heart and dearer image, stay; / Alas! true joys at best are dream enough; / Though you stay here, you pass too fast away, / For even at first life's taper is a snuff. / Fill'd with her love, may I be rather grown / Mad with much heart, than idiot with none.