As virtuous men pass mildly away
And whisper to their souls, to go
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now 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 trepidation of the spheres
Though greater far is innocent

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whole soul is sense)
Cannot admit absence
Because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it

But we by a love, so much refined
That our selves know not what it is
Inter assured of the mind
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss

Our two souls therefore, which are one
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but expansion
Like gold to very thinnest beat

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two
Thy soul the fixed foot, makes no show
To move but doth, if th'other do

And though it in the center sit
Yet when the other far doth roam
It leans and harkens after it
And grows erect, as that comes home

Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th'other foot, obliquely run
Thy firmness makes my circle just
And makes me end, where I began