Though the following lines of Donne, on the last night of the year,
have something in them too scholastic, they are not inelegant:


This twilight of two years, not past nor next,
Some emblem is of me, or I of this,
Who, meteor-like, of stuff and form perplext,
Whose what and where in disputation is,
If I should call me anything, should miss.
I sum the years and me, and find me not
Debtor to th' old, nor creditor to th' new.
That cannot say, my thanks I have forget,
Nor trust I this with hopes; and yet scarce true
This bravery is, since these times show'd me you--DONNE.


Yet more abstruse and profound is Donne's reflection upon man as a
microcosm:


If men be worlds, there is in every one
Something to answer in some proportion;
All the world's riches; and in good men, this
Virtue, our form's form, and our soul's soul, is


Of thoughts so far-fetched, as to be not only unexpected, but
unnatural, all their books are full.

To a lady, who wrote posies for rings: