As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to
their souls, to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
The breath
goes now, and some say, No;
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor
sigh-tempests move,
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity
our love.
Moving of th' earth brings
harms and fears;
Men reckon what it did, and
meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though
greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul
is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things
which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what
it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and
hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not
yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness
beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are
two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th'
other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth
roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes
home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th' other foot, obliquely run.
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I
begun.
