To Sir Henry Wotton: Sir, more than Kisses,…

Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls, / For thus, friends absent speak. This ease controls / The tediousness of my life; but for these / I could ideate nothing which could please; / But I should wither in one day, and pass / To a bottle of hay, that am a lock of grass. / Life is a voyage, and in our lives' ways / Countries, courts, towns are rocks, or remoras; / They break or stop all ships, yet our state's such, / That though than pitch they stain worse, we must touch. / If in the furnace of the raging line, / Or under th' adverse icy pole thou pine, / Thou know'st two temperate regions, girded in, / Dwell there; but O, what refuge canst thou win / Parch'd in the court, and in the country frozen? / Shall cities built of both extremes be chosen? / Can dung or garlic be perfume? Or can / A scorpion or torpedo cure a man? / Cities are worst of all three; of all three? / O knotty riddle! each is worst equally. / Cities are sepulchres; they who dwell there / Are carcases, as if none such there were. / And courts are theatres, where some men play / Princes, some slaves, all to one end, of one clay. / The country is a desert, where the good, / Gain'd, inhabits not, born, is not understood. / There men become beasts, and prone to all evils; / In cities blocks, and in a lewd court devils. / As in the first chaos, confusedly, / Each element's qualities were in th' other three, / So pride, lust, covetise, being several / To these three places, yet all are in all, / And mingled thus, their issue is incestuous. / Falsehood is denizen'd; virtue is barbarous. / Let no man say there, "Virtue's flinty wall / Shall lock vice in me, I'll do none, but know all. " / Men are sponges, which, to pour out, receive; / Who know false play, rather than lose, deceive. / For in best understandings sin began, / Angels sinn'd first, then devils, and then man. / Only perchance beasts sin not; wretched we / Are beasts in all but white integrity. / I think if men, which in these places live, / Durst look in themselves, and themselves retrieve, / They would like strangers greet themselves, seeing then / Utopian youth grown old Italian.

Be then thine own home, and in thyself dwell; / Inn anywhere; continuance maketh hell. / And seeing the snail, which everywhere doth roam, / Carrying his own house still, still is at home; / Follow-for he is easy paced-this snail, / Be thine own palace, or the world's thy gaol. / And in the world's sea do not like cork sleep / Upon the water's face; nor in the deep / Sink like a lead without a line; but as / Fishes glide, leaving no print where they pass, / Nor making sound; so closely thy course go, / Let men dispute, whether thou breathe or no. / Only in this be no Galenist-to make / Courts' hot ambitions wholesome, do not take / A dram of country's dullness; do not add / Correctives, but, as chemics, purge the bad. / But, sir, I advise not you, I rather do / Say o'er those lessons, which I learn'd of you; / Whom, free from Germany's schisms, and lightness / Of France, and fair Italy's faithlessness, / Having from these suck'd all they had of worth, / And brought home that faith which you carried forth, / I thoroughly love; but if myself I've won / To know my rules, I have, and you have Donne.