Aire and Angels
John Donne
1572 to 1631
Track 1
Reconstruct the poem by dragging each line into its correct position. Your goal is to reassemble the original poem as accurately as possible. As you move the lines, you'll see whether your arrangement is correct, helping you explore the poem's flow and meaning. You can also print out the jumbled poem to cut up and reassemble in the classroom. Either way, take your time, enjoy the process, and discover how the poet's words come together to create something truly beautiful.
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So thy love may be my loves spheare;
So in a voice, so in a shapelesse flame,
Love must not be, but take a body too,
Whilst thus to ballast love, I thought,
And fixe it selfe in thy lip, eye, and brow.
With wares which would sinke admiration,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
That it assume thy body, I allow,
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
As is twixt Aire and Angells puritie,
Then as an Angell, face, and wings
Just such disparitie
I saw, I had loves pinnace overfraught,
Ev'ry thy haire for love to worke upon
Before I knew thy face or name;
More subtile then the parent is,
Angells affect us oft, and worship'd bee;
Extreme, and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Takes limmes of flesh, and else could nothing doe,
Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
I bid Love aske, and now
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
But since my soule, whose child love is,
And so more steddily to have gone,
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
'Twixt womens love, and mens will ever bee.
Of aire, not pure as it, yet pure doth weare,