Read "To Mr. Rowland Woodward: Kindly I Envy Thy Song's Perfection" by John Donne online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Kindly I envy thy song's perfection / Built of all th' elements as our bodies are: / That Little of earth that is in it, is a fair / Delicious garden where all sweets are sown. / In it is cherishing fire which dries in me / Grief which did drown me: and half quenched by it / Are satiric fires which urged me to have writ / In scorn of all: for now I admire thee. / And as air doth fulfil the hollowness / Of rotten walls; so it mine emptiness, / Where tossed and moved it did beget this sound / Which as a lame echo of thine doth rebound / Oh, I was dead; but since thy song new life did give, / I recreated even by thy creature live.