{
 "id": "john-donne/loves-progress",
 "title": "Love’s Progress",
 "ordinal": "Elegy XVIII",
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "John Donne",
 "poet_slug": "john-donne",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems, &c. by John Donne, late Dean of St. Pauls, with Elegies on the Authors Death",
 "book_slug": "poems-1669",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": "Elegies",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1669,
  "venue": "Poems, &c. by John Donne, late Dean of St. Pauls, with Elegies on the Authors Death (1669)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
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  "sources": [
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   "https://archive.org/details/poemswithelegie00chamgoog",
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  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
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  [
   {
    "text": "Whoever loves, if he do not propose",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The right true end of love, he’s one that goes",
    "indent": 2
   },
   {
    "text": "To sea for nothing but to make him sick.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Love is a bear-whelp born; if we o’er-lick",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our love, and force it new strange shapes to take,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We err, and of a lump a monster make.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were not a calf a monster, that were grown",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Faced like a man, though better than his own?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Perfection is in unity; prefer",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One woman first, and then one thing in her.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I, when I value gold, may think upon",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The ductileness, the application,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The wholesomeness, the ingenuity,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From rust, from soil, from fire ever free;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But if I love it, ’tis because ’tis made",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By our new nature, use, the soul of trade.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All this in women we might think upon,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "—If women had them⁠—and yet love but one.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Can men more injure women than to say",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They love them for that, by which they’re not they?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Makes virtue woman? must I cool my blood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till I both be, and find one wise and good?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "May barren angels love so. But if we",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Make love to woman, virtue is not she,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As beauty is not, nor wealth. He that strays thus",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From her to hers is more adulterous",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than if he took her maid. Search every sphere",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And firmament, our Cupid is not there.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He’s an infernal God, and underground",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With Pluto dwells, where gold and fire abound.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Men to such gods their sacrificing coals",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Did not on altars lay, but pits and holes.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Although we see celestial bodies move",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Above the earth, the earth we till and love.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So we her airs contemplate, words and heart,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And virtues, but we love the centric part.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Nor is the soul more worthy, or more fit",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "For love, than this, as infinite as it.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But in attaining this desired place",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How much they err, that set out at the face?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The hair a forest is of ambushes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of springes, snares, fetters, and manacles;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The brow becalms us when ’tis smooth and plain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And when ’tis wrinkled, shipwrecks us again;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Smooth, ’tis a paradise, where we would have",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Immortal stay, but wrinkled ’tis a grave.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The nose, like to the first meridian, runs",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not ’twixt an east and west, but ’twixt two suns;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It leaves a cheek, a rosy hemisphere,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On either side, and then directs us where",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon the islands fortunate we fall,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not faint Canaries, but ambrosial,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Her swelling lips, to which when we are come,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We anchor there, and think ourselves at home,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For they seem all; there Siren’s songs and there",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wise Delphic oracles do fill the ear.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There, in a creek where chosen pearls do swell,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The remora, her cleaving tongue, doth dwell.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These and the glorious promontory, her chin,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O’erpast, and the straight Hellespont between",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not of two lovers, but two loves, the nests,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Succeeds a boundless sea, but yet thine eye",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some island moles may scattered there descry;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And sailing towards her India, in that way",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall at her fair Atlantic navel stay.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though there the current be the pilot made,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet, ere thou be where thou shouldst be embay’d,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou shalt upon another forest set,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where many shipwreck, and no further get.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When thou art there, consider what this chase",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Misspent by thy beginning at the face.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Rather set out below; practise thy art;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Some symmetry the foot hath with that part",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which thou dost seek, and is thy map for that,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lovely enough to stop, but not stay at.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Least subject to disguise and change it is;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Men say the devil never can change his;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It is the emblem that hath figured",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Firmness; ’tis the first part that comes to bed.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Civility we see refined; the kiss,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which at the face began, transplanted is,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Since to the hand, since to the imperial knee,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Now at the papal foot delights to be.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If kings think that the nearer way, and do",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rise from the foot, lovers may do so too;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For, as free spheres move faster far than can",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Birds, whom the air resists, so may that man",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which goes this empty and ethereal way,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than if at beauty’s elements he stay.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rich Nature in women wisely made",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Two purses, and their mouths aversely laid.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They then, which to the lower tribute owe,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That way which that exchequer looks must go;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He which doth not, his error is as great,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As who by clyster gives the stomach meat.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}