Lyric Poem · Love
The Primrose
by John Donne
1Upon this Primrose hill,
2Where, if Heav'n would distil
3A shower of rain, each several drop might go
4To his own primrose, and grow manna so;
5And where their form and their infinity
6Make a terrestrial Galaxy,
7As the small stars do in the sky:
8I walk to find a true Love; and I see
9That 'tis not a mere woman that is she,
10But must or more or less than woman be.
11Yet know I not which flower
12I wish; a six, or four;
13For should my true-Love less than woman be
14She were scarce any thing; and then, should she
15Be more than woman she would get above
16All thought of sex, and think to move
17My heart to study her, and not to love;
18Both these were monsters; since there must reside
19Falsehood in woman, I could more abide
20She were by art than Nature falsified.
21Live primrose then, and thrive
22With thy true number five;
23And woman, whom this flower doth represent,
24With this mysterious number be content;
25Ten is the farthest number; if half ten
26Belong unto each woman, then
27Each woman may take half us men;
28Or if this will not serve their turn, since all
29Numbers are odd or even, and they fall
30First into this, five, woman may take us all.
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“The Primrose” by John Donne — quilloak.com/poems/the-primrose
Quick facts
- Poem
- The Primrose
- Poet
- John Donne
- Length
- 30 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Love, Nature
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 30 lines · 3 stanzas of 10 lines
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- John Donne1572–1631
- Source record
- PoetryDBThe Primrose 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 57ed88db9875fd1f…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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