To the Countess of Bedford: you have Refined me, and to Worthiest Things by John Donne

Madam- / You have refined me, and to worthiest things- / Virtue, art, beauty, fortune. Now I see / Rareness or use, not nature, value brings; / And such, as they are circumstanced, they be. / Two ills can ne'er perplex us, sin to excuse; / But of two good things we may leave and choose.

Therefore at court-which is not virtue's clime, / Where a transcendent height (as lowness me) / Makes her not be, or not show-all my rhyme / Your virtues challenge, which there rarest be; / For, as dark texts need notes, there some must be / To usher Virtue, and say, "This is she."

So in the country's beauty. To this place / You are the season, Madam, you the day; / 'Tis but a grave of spices, till your face / Exhale them, and a thick close bud display; / Widow'd and reclused else, her sweets she enshrines / As China, when the sun at Brazil dines.

Out from your chariot morning breaks at night, / And falsifies both computations; so, / Since a new world doth rise here from your light, / We, your new creatures, by new reckonings go. / This shows that you from nature lothly stray, / That suffer not an artificial day.

In this you've made the court th' antipodes, / And will'd your delegate, the vulgar sun, / To do profane autumnal offices, / Whilst here to you we sacrificers run; / And whether priests or organs, you we obey; / We sound your influence, and your dictates say.

Yet to that deity which dwells in you, / Your virtuous soul, I now not sacrifice; / These are petitions and not hymns; they sue / But that I may survey the edifice; / In all religions as much care hath been / Of temples' frames and beauty, as rites within

As all which go to Rome do not thereby / Esteem religions, and hold fast the best, / But serve discourse and curiosity, / With that which doth religion but invest; / And shun th' entangling labyrinths of schools, / And make it wit, to think the wiser fools;

So in this pilgrimage I would behold / You as you're Virtue's temple, not as she; / What walls of tender crystal her enfold, / What eyes, hands, bosom, her pure altars be; / And after this survey, oppose to all / Babblers of chapels, you, th' Escurial.

Yet not as consecrate, but merely as fair; / On these I cast a lay and country eye. / Of past and future stories, which are rare, / I find you all record and prophecy. / Purge but the book of Fate, that it admit / No sad nor guilty legends-you are it.

If good and lovely were not one, of both / You were the transcript and original, / The elements, the parent, and the growth; / And every piece of you is both their all; / So entire are all your deeds, and you, that you / Must do the same things still; you cannot two.

But these-as nice thin school divinity / Serves heresy to further or repress- / Taste of poetic rage, or flattery; / And need not, where all hearts one truth profess. / Oft from new proofs, and new phrase, new doubts grow, / As strange attire aliens the men we know.

Leaving then busy praise and all appeal / To higher courts, sense's decree is true. / The mine, the magazine, the commonweal, / The story of beauty, in Twickenham is, and you. / Who hath seen one, would both; as, who had been / In Paradise, would seek the cherubin.