Welcome to Poetry.com!
Poetry.com is a collaborative platform for poets worldwide, offering a vast collection of works by both renowned and emerging poets. It's a community-driven project that serves as a hub for poets to share their works, receive feedback, and connect with like-minded fellow poets.
Explore our poetry collection by navigating through subjects, using alphabetical order, or search by keywords. You can contribute a new poem, share your thoughts and rating on existing works, listen to poems with voice pronunciation, and even translate pieces into a variety of languages, both common and uncommon.
John Donne 1572 (London) – 1631 (London)
Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is,
Love must not be, but take a body too;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid love ask, and now
That it assume thy body I allow,
And fix itself to thy lip, eye, and brow.
Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught
Every thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere.
Then as an angel, face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my love's sphere.
Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air and angel's purity,
'Twixt women's love and men's will ever be.
About this poem
"Air and Angels" is a poem by the metaphysical poet John Donne, first published in 1633 as part of his collection of poems entitled "Songs and Sonnets". The poem explores the theme of the nature of love and the relationship between the physical and spiritual aspects of human experience. The speaker begins by describing how physical beauty, represented by "air", is fleeting and transitory. However, the speaker then goes on to describe how the love between two people can transcend the physical realm and become something more spiritual, represented by "angels". Through the use of intricate metaphors and wordplay, Donne presents a complex and nuanced view of love and the human experience, making "Air and Angels" one of his most celebrated works. more »
45 fans
Translation
Find a translation for this poem in other languages:
Select another language:
- - Select -
- 简体中文 (Chinese - Simplified)
- 繁體中文 (Chinese - Traditional)
- Español (Spanish)
- Esperanto (Esperanto)
- 日本語 (Japanese)
- Português (Portuguese)
- Deutsch (German)
- العربية (Arabic)
- Français (French)
- Русский (Russian)
- ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada)
- 한국어 (Korean)
- עברית (Hebrew)
- Gaeilge (Irish)
- Українська (Ukrainian)
- اردو (Urdu)
- Magyar (Hungarian)
- मानक हिन्दी (Hindi)
- Indonesia (Indonesian)
- Italiano (Italian)
- தமிழ் (Tamil)
- Türkçe (Turkish)
- తెలుగు (Telugu)
- ภาษาไทย (Thai)
- Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
- Čeština (Czech)
- Polski (Polish)
- Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
- Românește (Romanian)
- Nederlands (Dutch)
- Ελληνικά (Greek)
- Latinum (Latin)
- Svenska (Swedish)
- Dansk (Danish)
- Suomi (Finnish)
- فارسی (Persian)
- ייִדיש (Yiddish)
- հայերեն (Armenian)
- Norsk (Norwegian)
- English (English)
Citation
Use the citation below to add this poem to your bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"Poetry.com" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2023. Web. 9 Dec. 2023. <https://www.poetry.com/>.
.jpg/243px-Goethe_(Stieler_1828).jpg "Johann Wolfgang von Goethe"){kind=small}
Discuss the poem "Air And Angels" with the community...
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In