Lyric Poem · Love

Air And Angels

by John Donne

Reading room

1Twice or thrice had I loved thee,

2Before I knew thy face or name,

3So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,

4Angels affect us oft, and worship'd be;

5Still when, to where thou wert, I came,

6Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.

7But since my soul, whose child love is,

8Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,

9More subtile than the parent is,

10Love must not be, but take a body too,

11And therefore what thou wert, and who,

12I bid Love ask, and now

13That it assume thy body, I allow,

14And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

15Whilst thus to ballast love, I thought,

16And so more steadily to have gone,

17With wares which would sink admiration,

18I saw, I had love's pinnace overfraught,

19Ev'ry thy hair for love to work upon

20Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;

21For, nor in nothing, nor in things

22Extreme, and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere;

23Then as an Angel, face, and wings

24Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,

25So thy love may be my loves sphere;

26Just such disparity

27As is twixt Air and Angels' purity,

28'Twixt women's love, and men's will ever be.

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“Air And Angels” by John Donne — quilloak.com/poems/air-and-angels

Quick facts

Poem: Air And Angels
Poet: John Donne
Length: 28 lines
Form: Lyric Poem
Themes: Love, Peace, Childhood

Craft notes

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Shape: 28 lines · 2 stanzas of 14 lines

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Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.

Author record: John Donne1572–1631
Source record: PoetryDBAir And Angels by john-donne, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision: Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record: Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint: SHA-256 f2ef8af9a404c11e…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.

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Lyric Poem Love Peace Childhood

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