" For the first twenty years, since yesterday,
I scarce believed thou could'st be gone away;
For forty more, I fed on favors past,
And forty' on hopes, that thou would'st they might last.
Tears drowned one hundred, and sighs blew out two;
A thousand, I did neither think, nor do,
Or not divide, all being one thought of you;
Or, in a thousand more, forget that too.
Yet call not this, long life, but think that I
Am, by being dead, immortal; can ghosts die? "

― John Donne , John Donne: Selected Poems