Love's Exchange Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCD EEFFFFF GGHIJJJ KKLLMMM NNOPFFF QQRRHIILOVE any devil else but you | A |
Would for a given soul give something too | A |
At court your fellows every day | B |
Give th' art of rhyming huntsmanship or play | B |
For them which were their own before | C |
Only I have nothing which gave more | C |
But am alas by being lowly lower | D |
- | |
I ask no dispensation now | E |
To falsify a tear or sigh or vow | E |
I do not sue from thee to draw | F |
A non obstante on nature's law | F |
These are prerogatives they inhere | F |
In thee and thine none should forswear | F |
Except that he Love's minion were | F |
- | |
Give me thy weakness make me blind | G |
Both ways as thou and thine in eyes and mind | G |
Love let me never know that this | H |
Is love or that love childish is | I |
Let me not know that others know | J |
That she knows my paines lest that so | J |
A tender shame make me mine own new woe | J |
- | |
If thou give nothing yet thou 'rt just | K |
Because I would not thy first motions trust | K |
Small towns which stand stiff till great shot | L |
Enforce them by war's law condition not | L |
Such in Love's warfare is my case | M |
I may not article for grace | M |
Having put Love at last to show this face | M |
- | |
This face by which he could command | N |
And change th' idolatry of any land | N |
This face which wheresoe'er it comes | O |
Can call vow'd men from cloisters dead from tombs | P |
And melt both poles at once and store | F |
Deserts with cities and make more | F |
Mines in the earth than quarries were before | F |
- | |
For this Love is enraged with me | Q |
Yet kills not if I must example be | Q |
To future rebels if th' unborn | R |
Must learn by my being cut up and torn | R |
Kill and dissect me Love for this | H |
Torture against thine own end is | I |
Rack'd carcasses make ill anatomies | I |
John Donne
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