The Ecstasy

• Where, like a pillow on a bed
• A pregnant bank swell'd up to rest
• The violet's reclining head,
• Sat we two, one another's best.
• Our hands were firmly cemented
• With a fast balm, which thence did spring;
• Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
• Our eyes upon one double string;
• So to'intergraft our hands, as yet
• Was all the means to make us one,
• And pictures in our eyes to get
• Was all our propagation.
• As ‘twixt two equal armies fate
• Suspends uncertain victory,
• Our souls (which to advance their state
• Were gone out) hung ‘twixt her and me.
• And whilst our souls negotiate there,
• We like sepulchral statues lay;
• All day, the same our postures were,
• And we said nothing, all the day.
• If any, so by love refin'd
• That he soul's language understood,
• And by good love were grown all mind,
• Within convenient distance stood,
• He (though he knew not which soul spake,
• Because both meant, both spake the same)
• Might thence a new concoction take
• And part far purer than he came.
• This ecstasy doth unperplex,
• We said, and tell us what we love;
• We see by this it was not sex,
• We see we saw not what did move;
• But as all several souls contain
• Mixture of things, they know not what,
• Love these mix'd souls doth mix again
• And makes both one, each this and that.
• A single violet transplant,
• The strength, the colour, and the size,
• (All which before was poor and scant)
• Redoubles still, and multiplies.
• When love with one another so
• Interinanimates two souls,
• That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
• Defects of loneliness controls.
• We then, who are this new soul, know
• Of what we are compos'd and made,
• For th' 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'are ours, though they'are not we; we are
• The intelligences, they the spheres.
• We owe them thanks, because they thus
• Did us, to us, at first convey,
• Yielded their senses' force to us,
• Nor are dross to us, but allay.
• On man heaven's influence works not so,
• But that it first imprints the air;
• So soul into the soul may flow,
• Though it to body first repair.
• As our blood labors to beget
• Spirits, as like souls as it can,
• Because such fingers need to knit
• 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.
• To'our bodies turn we then, that so
• Weak men on love reveal'd may look;
• Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
• But yet the body is his book.
• And if some lover, such as we,
• Have heard this dialogue of one,
• Let him still mark us, he shall see
• Small change, when we'are to bodies gone.