COME live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.
There will the river whisp’ring run
Warm’d by thy eyes, more than the sun ;
And there th’ enamour’d fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.
When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.
If thou, to be so seen, be’st loth,
By sun or moon, thou dark’nest both,
And if myself have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.
Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare, or windowy net.
Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest ;
Or curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes’ wand’ring eyes.
For thee, thou need’st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait :
That fish, that is not catch’d thereby,
Alas ! is wiser far than I.
By John Donne
It’s been some time since I posted on past poets.I loved this piece, because of its dual nature.John has woven some spiritual undertones into this work.Older English poets usually worked with forms.John took a standard pastoral form and flipped it on it’s head, turning the poem into a spiritual metaphor.The line, ‘…some new pleasures prove’ is open ended.Leading the reader to contemplate,what pleasures he had in mind.In the previous line he opened with ‘come live with me and be my love’ the reader would most likely assume that the love here would connote sexual pleasure.The stress is on the words ‘new pleasures prove’ which suggest he is saying something totally different, from his previous statement.Talk about hidden meaning,poetry is like solving a jigsaw puzzle.There are many ways to go about it, until the complete picture reveals itself.My interpretation.
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