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John Donne (1572-1631)

The Computation


              1For my first twenty years, since yesterday,
              2I scarce believ’d thou could’st be gone away,
              3For forty more, I fed on favours past,
              4And forty’on hopes that thou would’st they might last.
              5Tears drown'd one hundred, and sighs blew out two,
              6A thousand, I did neither think nor do,
              7Or not divide, all being one thought of you;
              8Or in a thousand more, forgot that too.
              9Yet call not this long life; but think that I
            10Am, by being dead, immortal; can ghosts die?

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Donne, John. The Elegies and the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne. Edited by Helen Gardner. London: Oxford University Press, 1965: 36.
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire, assisted by Ana Berdinskikh
RP edition: 2009
Recent editing: 1:2009/7/2

Form: ten-line stanza
Rhyme: aabbccccdd

Other poems by John Donne

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