Read "To Mr. Rowland Woodward: if, as Mine is, Thy Life a Slumber Be" by John Donne online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
If, as mine is, thy life a slumber be, / Seem, when thou read'st these lines, to dream of me. / Never did Morpheus nor his brother wear / Shapes so like those shapes, whom they would appear, / As this my letter is like me, for it / Hath my name, words, hand, feet, heart, mind and wit. / It is my deed of gift of me to thee; / It is my will, myself the legacy. / So thy retirings I love, yea envy, / Bred in thee by a wise melancholy, / That I rejoice, that unto where thou art, / Though I stay here, I can thus send my heart, / As kindly as any enamour'd patient / His picture to his absent love hath sent.
All news I think sooner reach thee than me; / Havens are heavens, and ships wing'd angels be, / The which both gospel and stern threatenings bring. / Guiana's harvest is nipp'd in the spring, / I fear; and with us, methinks, Fate deals so / As with the Jews' guide God did; He did show / Him the rich land, but barr'd his entry in; / Our slowness is our punishment and sin. / Perchance, these Spanish businesses being done, / Which, as the earth between the moon and sun, / Eclipse the light which Guiana would give, / Our discontinued hopes we shall retrieve. / But if-as all th' All must-hopes smoke away, / Is not almighty virtue an India? / If men be worlds, there is in everyone / Something to answer in some proportion / All the world's riches; and in good men this, / Virtue, our form's form and our soul's soul, is.