A Good-Bye: Don't Cry

 As good men pass on with no fuss
 And say soft to their souls to go,
 While some of their sad friends do guess
 The breath goes now, and some say, no;

 So let us melt, and make no noise,
 Make no tear floods, nor sigh storms move,
 It were bad words said at our joys
 To tell the lay folk of our love.

 The jolts of earth bring harms and fears,
 Men work out what it did and meant;
 But fear of what comes, of the spears,
 Though far more great, has no fault spent.

 The love of dull and 'neath moon beaus
 (Whose soul is sense) can't bear up
 When they do part, for then they lose
 Those things at base which make it up.

 But we by a love so much made fine,
 That our selves know not what it is,
 Made sure in self our selves of the mind,
 Care less eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

 Our two souls then, which thus are one,
 Though I must go now, feel not yet
 A breach, but a growth gone on,
 Like gold to an air-thin sheet beat.

 If they be two, they are two so
 As stiff twin tools for rounds are two:
 Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
 To move, but does, if the free one do.

 And though it in the mid point sit,
 Yet when the free one far does roam,
 It leans, and yearns to be with it,
 And grows straight up as that comes home.

 Such wilt thou be to me, who must
 Like that far foot, run at slant parts;
 Thy firm self draws my rounds just,
 And makes me end, where I did start.

                                -- John Donne

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