"Who ever comes to shroud me, do not harm Nor question much That subtle wreath of hair, which crowns my arm; The mystery, the sign you must not touch, For 'tis my outward soul, Viceroy to that, which then to heaven being gone, Will leave this to control, And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolution."

"To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend, All is the purlieu of the god of love."

"I long to talk with some old lover's ghost, Who died before the god of love was born."

"Love's mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book."

"That subtle knot which makes us man: So must pure lovers' souls descend T' affections, and to faculties, Which sense may reach and apprehend, Else a great Prince in prison lies."

"We then, who are this new soul, know Of what we are composed and made, For the' atomies of which we grow Are souls, whom no change can invade. But oh alas, so long, so far, Our bodies why do we forbear? They're ours, though they're not we; we are The intelligences, they the spheres."

"Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread Our eyes, upon one double string; So to entergraft our hands, as yet Was all the means to make us one, And pictures in our eyes to get Was all our propagation."

"I observe the physician, with the same diligence, as he the disease; I see he fears, and I fear with him..."

"And then as the other world produces serpents, and vipers, malignant, and venomous creatures, and worms, and caterpillars, that endeavour to devour that world produces them, and monsters compiled and complicated of diverse parents, and kinds, so this world, ourselves produces all these in us, in producing diseases and sicknesses of all those sorts; venomous and infectious diseases, feeding and consuming diseases..."

"Enlarge this meditation upon this great world, man, so far, as to consider the immensity of the creatures this world produces; our creatures are our thoughts, creatures that are born giants; that reach from east to west, from earth to heaven, that do not only bestride all the sea and land, but span the sun and firmament at once; my thoughts reach all, comprehend all. Inexplicable mystery; I their creator am in a close prison, in a sick bed, anywhere, and any one of my creatures, my thoughts, is with the sun, and beyond the sun, overtakes the sun, and overgoes the sun in one pace, one step, everywhere."

"It is too little to call man a little world, except God, man is a diminutive to nothing. Man consists of more pieces, more parts, than the world; than the world doth, nay, than the world is."

"Man, who is the noblest part of the earth, melts so away as if he were a statue, not of earth, but of snow."

"Variable, and therefore miserable condition of man; this minute I was well, and am ill, this minute."

"Show me, dear Christ, Thy spouse, so bright and clear."

"Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend."

"What if this present were the world's last night?"

"One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die."

"Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell; And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke."

"Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so, For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow, Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me."

"If poisonous minerals, and if that tree, Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us, If lecherous goats, if serpents envious Cannot be damned; alas; why should I be?"

"All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, Despair, law, chance, hath slain."

"At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise From death, you numberless infinities Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go."

"I am a little world made cunningly Of elements, and an angelic sprite."

"I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den? ’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be. If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee. And now good-morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear; For love, all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room an everywhere. Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone, Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown, Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest; Where can we find two better hemispheres, Without sharp north, without declining west? Whatever dies, was not mixed equally; If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die."

"Licence my roving hands, and let them go Before, behind, between, above, below. O, my America, my Newfoundland My kingdom, safest when with one man mann's, My mine of precious stones, my empery; How am I blest in thus discovering thee ! To enter in these bonds, is to be free ; Then, where my hand is set, my soul shall be.""

"Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee, As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, To taste whole joys."

"O my America! my new-found land."

"Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright."

"The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts Not of two lovers, but two loves the nests."

"Who ever loves, if he do not propose The right true end of love, he's one that goes To sea for nothing but to make him sick."

"The heavens rejoice in motion, why should I Abjure my so much loved variety."

"She, and comparisons are odious."

"Donne, more than any other of his lifetime, understood that flair is its own kind of truth: if you want to make your point, make it so vivid and strange that it cuts straight throughyour interlocutor's complacent attention. To read his verse is to hear him insist, across the gap of hundreds of years: for God's sake, will you listen."

"think: poems fixed this landscape: Blake, Donne, Keats"

"Donne is the most inharmonious of our versifiers, if he can be said to have deserved such a name by lines too rugged to seem metre. Of his earlier poems many are very licentious; the later are chiefly devout. Few are good for much; the conceits have not even the merit of being intelligible; it would perhaps be difficult to select three passages that we should care to read again."

"His writings, like his actions, were faulty, violent, a little morbid even, and abnormal. He was not, and did not attempt to be, an average man. But actions and writings alike, in their strangeness and aloofness, were unadulterated by a tinge of affectation."

"I have heard it said, by the way, that Donne's intolerable defect of ear grew out of his own baptismal name, when harnessed to his own surname -- John Donne. No man, it was said, who had listened to this hideous jingle from childish years, could fail to have his genius for discord, and the abominable in sound, improved to the utmost."

"To read Dryden, Pope, &c., you need only count syllables; but to read Donne you must measure time, and discover the time of each word by the sense of passion."

"He was the Word, that spake it: He took the bread and brake it; And what that Word did make it, I do believe and take it."

"When God's hand is bent to strike, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God; but to fall out of the hands of the living God is a horror beyond our expression, beyond our imagination."

"Poor intricated soul! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthian soul!"

"And what is so intricate, so entangling as death? Who ever got out of a winding sheet?"

"I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in and invite God and his angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door."

"Now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons."

"What gnashing is not a comfort, what gnawing of the worm is not a tickling, what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation, to be secluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God?"

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."