As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go;
While some of their sad friends do say,
Now his breath goes, and some say, No;
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidations of the spheres,
Through greater far, are innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence; for that it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we, by a love so far refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Careless, eyes, lips and hands to miss,
- Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.