For I am every dead thing In whom love wrought new alchemy For his art did express A quintessence even from nothingness, From dull privations, and lean emptiness He ruined me, and I am re-begot Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not.

I have done one braver thing than all the Worthies did, and yet a braver thence doth spring, which is, to keep that hid.

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.

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed.

Now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.

Religion is not a melancholy, the spirit of God is not a damper.

Poetry is a counterfeit creation, and makes things that are not, as though they were