Introduction
Nicholas Copernicus
De Revolutionibus
John Dee
The Mathematicall Praeface
Robert Recorde
The Castle of Knowledge
Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus
The Zodiake of Life
Thomas Digges
A Perfect Description of the Celestial Orbs
Giordano Bruno
The Ash Wednesday Supper
Galileo Galilei
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
Ben Jonson
News From the New World Discovered in the Moon
John Donne
Loves Growth
John Donne
A Valediction: forbidding mourning
Bibliography
forbidding mourning
John Donne
As virtuous men passe mildly away,
And whisper to their soules, to goe,
whilst some of their sad friends doe say,
The breath goes now, and some say, no:
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No teare-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
'Twere prophanation of our joyes
To tell the layetie our love.
Moving of th'earth brings harmes and feares,
Men reckon what it did and meant,
But trepidation of the spheares,
Though greater farre, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers love
(Whose soule is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by'a love, so much refin'd,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care lesse, eyes, lips, and hands to misse.
Our two soules therefore, which are one,
Though I must goe, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to ayery thinnesse beate.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiffe twin compasses are two,
Thy soule the fixt foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the'other doe.
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth rome,
It leanes, and hearkens after it,
And growes erect, as it comes home.
Such wilt thou be to mee, who must
Like th'other foot, obliquely runne;
Thy firmnes makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begunne.
Copyright 1999, MATC
Last updated 20 January 2000