except _Lec_, which here
as in several other little details appears to resemble _1633_ more
closely than either of the other MSS.
as in several other little details appears to resemble _1633_ more
closely than either of the other MSS.
John Donne
6.
The
body, being composed of contrary elements, has not this essential
immortality: 'In Heaven we doe not say, that our bodies shall devest
their mortality, so, as that naturally they could not dye; for they
shall have a composition still; and every compounded thing may perish;
but they shall be so assured, and with such a preservation, as they
shall alwaies know they shall never dye. ' _Sermons_ 80. 19. 189.
PAGE =8=. SONG.
The first two stanzas of this song are printed in the 1653 edition of
the Poems of Francis Beaumont, with the title _A Raritie_. It is
set to music in Eg. MS. 2013, f. 58. Mr. Chambers points out that
Habington's poem, _Against them who lay Unchastity to the Sex of
Women_ (_Castara_, ed. Elton, p. 231), evidently refers to this poem:
They meet but with unwholesome springs
And summers which infectious are:
They hear but when the meremaid sings,
And only see the falling starre:
Who ever dare
Affirme no woman chaste and faire.
Goe cure your feavers; and you'le say
The Dog-dayes scorch not all the yeare:
In copper mines no longer stay,
But travel to the west, and there
The right ones see,
And grant all gold's not alchimie.
A poem modelled on Donne's appears in Harleian MS. 6057, and in _The
Treasury of Music. By Mr. Lawes and others. _ (1669)
Goe catch a star that's falling from the sky,
Cause an immortal creature for to die;
Stop with thy hand the current of the seas,
Post ore the earth to the Antipodes;
Cause times return and call back yesterday,
Cloake January with the month of May;
Weigh out an ounce of flame, blow back the winde:
And then find faith within a womans minde.
JOHN DUNNE.
l. 2. _Get with child a mandrake root. _ 'Many Mola's and false
conceptions there are of _Mandrakes_, the first from great Antiquity,
conceiveth the Root thereof resembleth the shape of Man. . . . Now
whatever encourageth the first invention, there have not been wanting
many ways of its promotion. The first a Catachrestical and far derived
similitude it holds with Man; that is, in a bifurcation or division of
the Root into two parts, which some are content to call Thighs. ' Sir
Thomas Browne's _Vulgar Errors_ (1686), ii. 6, p. 72. Compare also
_The Progresse of the Soule_, st. xv, p. 300.
PAGE =10=. THE UNDERTAKING.
l. 2. _the Worthies. _ The nine worthies usually named are Joshua,
David, Judas Maccabaeus, Hector, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Arthur,
Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon, but they varied. Guy of Warwick
is mentioned by Gerard Legh, _Accedens of Armorye_. Nash mentions
Solomon and Gideon; and Shakespeare introduces Hercules and Pompey
in _Love's Labour's Lost_. _All the Worthies_ therefore covers a
wide field. The Worthies figured largely in decorative designs and
pageants. On a target taken at the siege of Ostend 'was enammeled
in gold the seven [_sic_] Worthies, worth seven or eight hundred
guilders'. Vere's _Commentaries_ (1657), p. 174.
l. 6. _The skill of specular stone. _ Compare _To the Countesse of
Bedford_, p. 219, ll. 28-30:
You teach (though wee learne not) a thing unknowne
To our late times, the use of specular stone,
Through which all things within without were shown.
Grosart (ii. 48-9) and Professor Norton (Grolier, i. 217) take
'specular' as meaning simply 'translucent', and the latter quotes
Holinshed's _Chronicle_, ii. ch. 10: 'I find obscure mention of the
specular stone also to have been found and applied to this use' (i. e.
glazing windows) 'in England, but in such doubtful sort as I dare
not affirm for certain. ' This is the 'pierre speculaire' or 'pierre a
miroir' which Cotgrave describes as 'A light, white, and transparent
stone, easily cleft into thinne flakes, and used by th' Arabians
(among whom it growes) instead of glasse; anight it represents the
Moon, and even increases or decreases, as the Moon doth'. But surely
Donne refers to crystal-gazing. Paracelsus has a paragraph in the
_Coelum Philosophorum_:
'How to conjure the Crystal so that all Things may
be seen in it.
'To conjure is nothing else than to observe anything rightly, to know
and to understand what it is. The crystal is a figure of the air.
Whatever appears in the air, movable or immovable, the same appears
also in the speculum or crystal as a wave. For the air, the water, and
the crystal, so far as vision is concerned, are one, like a mirror
in which an inverted copy of an object is seen. ' The old name for
crystal-gazers was 'specularii'. Mr. Chambers suggests very probably
that there is a reference to Dr. Dee's magic mirrors or 'show stone',
but one would like to explain the reference to the cutting of the
stone on the one hand, and its being no longer to be found on the
other.
l. 16. _Loves but their oldest clothes. _ The 'her' of _B_ is a
tempting reading in view of the 'woman' which follows, but 'their'
is the common version and the poet's mind passes rapidly to and fro
between the abstract and its concrete embodiments. The proleptic use
of the pronoun is striking in either case.
Compare _To Mrs. M. H. _, p. 217, ll. 31-2.
l. 18. _Vertue attir'd in woman see. _ The reading of the 1633
edition, which is that of the best manuscripts, has more of Donne's
characteristic hyperbole than the metrically more regular 'Vertue in
woman see'. 'If you can see the Idea of Vertue attired in the visible
form of woman and love that. '
PAGE =11=. THE SUNNE RISING.
Compare Ovid, _Amores_, I. 13.
Iam super oceanum venit a seniore marito,
Flava pruinoso quae vehit axe diem.
Quo properas, Aurora?
. . .
Quo properas, ingrata viris, ingrata puellis?
. . .
Tu pueros somno fraudas, tradisque magistris,
Ut subeant tenerae verbera saeva manus.
A comparison of Ovid's simple and natural images and reflections with
Donne's passionate but ingenious hyperboles will show exactly what
Testi meant by his contrast of the homely imagery of classical and the
metaphysical manner of Italian love poetry.
l. 17. _both th' India's of spice and Myne. _ A distinction that Donne
is never tired of. 'The use of the word mine specifically for mines
of gold, silver, or precious stone is, I believe, peculiar to Donne. '
Coleridge, quoted by Norton. The O. E. D. does not contradict this, for
the word had a wider connotation. Compare _Loves exchange_, p. 35, ll.
34-35:
and make more
Mynes in the earth, then Quarries were before.
And _The Progresse of the Soule_, p. 295, l. 17:
thy Western land of Myne.
And for the two Indias: 'As hee that hath a plentifull fortune in
Europe, cares not much though there be no land of perfumes in the
East, nor of gold, in the West-Indies. ' _Sermons_ 50. 15. 123. And
'Sir. Your way into Spain was eastward, and that is the way to the
land of perfumes and spices; their way hither is westward, and that
is the way to the land of gold and of mines,' &c. _To Sir Robert Ker. _
Gosse's _Life, &c. _, ii. 191.
l. 24. _All wealth alchimie_: i. e. imposture or 'glittering dross'
(O. E. D. ). 'Though the show of it were glorious, the substance of it
was dross, and nothing but alchymy and cozenage. ' Harrington, _Orlando
Furioso_ (1591). See also poem cited II. p. 11.
PAGE =12=. THE INDIFFERENT.
l. 7. _dry corke. _ Cork was a favourite metaphor for what was dry
and withered. To our taste it is hardly congruous with love or tragic
poetry, perhaps because of its associations. 'Bind fast his corky
arms,' says Cornwall, speaking of Gloucester (_King Lear_, III. vii.
31), but Shakespeare seems to have taken the epithet from Harsnett's
_Declaration of Egregious Popishe Impostures, &c. _ (1603): 'It would
pose all the cunning exorcists . . . to teach an old corkie woman to
writhe, tumble, curvet,' c. 5, p. 23.
PAGE =13=. LOVES USURY.
l. 5. _My body raigne. _ Grosart and Chambers substitute 'range', from
_1635-69_. Perhaps they are right; but I feel doubtful. All the best
MSS. read 'raigne. ' Donne contrasts the reign of love and the reign of
lust on the body, and frankly declares for the latter. A lover might
range, 'I can love both fair and brown,' but no lover could
mistake by the way
The maid, and tell the lady of that delay.
Adonis, with graver rhetoric, states the other side of Donne's
paradoxical thesis:
Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.
Shakespeare, _Venus and Adonis_, v. cxxxiv.
ll. 13-16. Chambers and Grosart have adopted, with some modification
of punctuation, the reading of the 1633-54 editions, and the lines are
frequently quoted as printed by Chambers:
Only let me love none; no, not the sport
From country-grass to confitures of court,
Or city's quelque-choses; let not report
My mind transport.
I confess I find it difficult to attach any exact meaning to them.
Are there any instances of 'sport' thus used apparently for 'sportive
lady'? The difficulty seems to me to have arisen from the accidental
dropping in the 1633 edition of the semicolon after 'sport', which the
1669 editor rightly restored. What Donne means by 'the sport' is clear
enough from other passages, e. g. 'the short scorn of a bridegroom's
play' (_Loves Alchimie_), 'as she would man should despise the sport'
(_Farewell to Love_). The prayer that report _may_ ('let', not 'let
not') carry his roving fancy from one to another, is in keeping
with the whole tenor of the poem. The Grolier Club edition has the
punctuation I have given, which I had adopted before I saw that
edition. I find it difficult to attach any meaning to 'let not
report'.
PAGE =14=. THE CANONIZATION.
l. 7. _Or the Kings reall, or his stamped face Contemplate. _ Donne's
conceits reappear in his sermons in a different setting. 'Beloved in
Christ Jesus, the heart of your gracious God is set upon you; and we
his servants have told you so, and brought you thus neare him, into
his Court, into his house, into the Church, but yet we cannot get
you to see his face, to come to that tendernesse of conscience as to
remember and consider that all your most secret actions are done in
his sight and his presence; Caesars face, and Caesars inscription you
can see: The face of the Prince in his coyne you can rise before the
Sun to see, and sit up till mid-night to see; but if you do not see
the face of God upon every piece of that mony too, all that mony is
counterfeit; If Christ have not brought that fish to the hook, that
brings the mony in the mouth (as he did to _Peter_) that mony is ill
fished for. ' _Sermons_ 80. 12. 122.
l. 15. 'Man' is the reading of every MS.
except _Lec_, which here
as in several other little details appears to resemble _1633_ more
closely than either of the other MSS. , _D_, _H49_. It is quite
possible that 'man' is correct--a vivid and concrete touch, but in
view of the 'men' which follows 'more' is preferable. The two words
are frequently interchanged in the MSS.
ll. 24-5. The punctuation of these lines is that of _D_, _H49_,
_Lec_, though I adopted it independently as required by the sense. The
editions put a full stop after each line. Chambers alters the first
(l. 24) to a semicolon and connects
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
with the two preceding lines. To me it seems the line _must_ go with
what follows, and that 'so' (which should have no comma) is not an
illative conjunction but a subordinate conjunction of effect. 'Both
sexes fit _so_ entirely into one neutral thing that we die and rise
the same,' &c. The Grolier Club editor, like Chambers, connects the
line with what has gone before, but drops the comma after 'so', making
it an adverb of degree.
ll. 37-45. _And thus invoke us, &c. _ Grosart and Chambers have
disguised and altered the sense of this stanza. Grosart, indeed, by
printing 'Who did the whole world's extract', has made it completely
unintelligible. Chambers's version gives a meaning, but a wrong one.
He prints the last six lines thus:
Who did the whole worlds soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes;
So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize--
Countries, towns, courts beg from above
A pattern of your love.
These harsh constructions are not Donne's. The object of 'drove' is
not the 'world's soul', but 'Countries, towns, courts'; and 'beg' is
not in the indicative but the imperative mood. For clearness' sake
I have bracketed ll. 42-3 and printed 'love! ' otherwise leaving the
punctuation unchanged.
Donne as usual is pedantically accurate in the details of his
metaphor. The canonized lovers are invoked as saints, i. e. _their
prayers are requested_. They are asked to beg from above a pattern of
their love for those below. Of prayers to saints Donne speaks in one
of his _Letters_, p. 181: 'I see not how I can admit that circuit of
sending them' (i. e. letters) 'to you to be sent hither; that seems a
kinde of praying to Saints, to whom God must tell first, that such a
man prays to them to pray to him. '
l. 40. The 'contract' of the printed editions is doubtless correct,
despite the preference of the MSS. for 'extract'. This goes in several
MSS. with other errors which show confusion. _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ read
'and drawe', a bad rhyme; and _A18_, _N_, _TCC_ (the verse is lost in
_TCD_) drop 'soule', reading 'the world extract'. The reading
'extract' is due to what Dr. Moore calls 'the extraordinary
short-sightedness of the copyists in respect of a construction. Their
vision seems often to be bounded by a single line. ' To 'extract the
soul' of things is a not uncommon phrase with Donne. Here it does not
suit the thought which is coming so well as 'contract': 'As the spirit
and soule of the whole booke of Psalmes is contracted into this
psalme, so is the spirit and soule of this whole psalme contracted
into this verse. ' _Sermons_ 80. 66. 663. (Psal. lxiii. 7. _Because
thou hast beene my helpe, Therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I
rejoice. _)
l. 45. _A patterne of your love. _ The 'of our love' of 1633 _might_
mean 'for our love', but it is clear from the manner in which
this stanza is given in _D_ that the copyist has misunderstood the
construction--'our love' follows from the assumption that 'Countries,
Townes, Courts' is the subject to 'Beg'. The colon and the capital
letter would not make such a view impossible, as they might be given a
merely emphasizing value; or if regarded as imperative the 'Beg' might
be taken as in the third person: 'Countries, Townes, Courts--let them
beg,' &c. Compare:
The God of Souldiers:
With the consent of supreame Jove, informe
Thy thoughts with Noblenesse.
Shakespeare, _Cor. _ V. iii. 70-2 (Simpson, _Shakespearian
Punctuation_, p. 98).
But clearly here 'Beg' is in the second person plural, predicate to
'You whom reverend love', and 'your love' is the right reading.
PAGE =16=. THE TRIPLE FOOLE.
He is trebly a fool because (1) he loves, (2) he expresses his love in
verse, (3) he thereby enables some one to set the verse to music and
by singing it to re-awaken the passion which composition had lulled to
sleep.
PAGE =17=. LOVERS INFINITENESS.
This song, which is one of the obviously authentic lyrics which is
not included in the _A18_, _N_, _TC_ collection, would seem to have
undergone some revision after its first issue. The version given in
_A25_, from which _Cy_ is copied, would seem to be the original,
at least the readings of ll. 25-6 and ll. 29-30 do not look like
corruptions. The reading 'beget' at l. 25 gives a better rhyme to
'yet' than 'admit'. In l. 29 _A25_ has obviously interchanged 'thine'
and 'mine'. The slightly different version of _JC_ gives the correct
order. The generally careful _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ group has an unusually
faulty text of this poem. Among other mistakes it reads (with _S96_)
'Thee' for 'them' in l. 32.
'Lovers Infiniteness' is a strange title. It is not found in any
of the MSS. , and possibly should be 'Loves Infiniteness'. Yet the
'Lovers' suits the closing thought:
so we shall
Be one, and one anothers All.
For a poem in obvious imitation of this, see _Appendix C_, p. 439.
ll. 1-11. The rhetoric and rhythm of Donne's elaborate stanzas depends
a good deal on their right punctuation. Mine is an attempt to correct
that of _1633_ without modernizing. The full stop after 'fall' is
obviously an error, and so is, I think, the comma after 'spent'. The
first six lines state in a rapid succession of clauses all that the
poet has done to gain his lady's love. A new thought begins with 'Yet
no more', &c.
l. 9. _generall_ is the reading of two MSS. which are practically one.
I have recorded it because (1) ll. 29-30 (see textual note) would seem
to suggest that their version of the poem is an early one (revised by
Donne), and this may be an early reading; (2) because in l. 20 this
epithet is used as though repeated, 'thy gift being generall. ' It
would be not unlike Donne to quibble with the word, making it mean
first a gift made generally to all, and secondly a gift general in its
content, not limited or defined in any way. The whole poem is a piece
of legal quibbling not unlike Shakespeare's 87th Sonnet:
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate, &c.
PAGE =18=. SONG.
_Sweetest love, &c. _ Of the music to this and 'Send home my long
stray'd eyes' I can discover no trace. _The Baite_ was doubtless sung
to the same air as Marlowe's 'Come live with me'. See II. p. 57.
ll. 6-8. I have retained the text of _1633_, which has the support of
all the MSS. That of _1635-54_ is an attempt to accommodate the lines,
by a little padding, to the rhythm of the corresponding lines in the
other stanzas.
PAGE =20=. THE LEGACIE.
ll. 9-16. I HEARD ME SAY, _&c. _ The construction of this verse has
proved rather a difficulty to editors. I give it as printed by
Chambers and by the Grolier Club editor. Chambers's modernized version
runs:
I heard me say, 'Tell her anon,
That myself', that is you not I,
'Did kill me', and when I felt me die,
I bid me send my heart, when I was gone;
But I alas! could there find none;
When I had ripp'd and search'd where hearts should lie,
It killed me again, that I who still was true
In life, in my last will should cozen you.
The Grolier Club version has no inverted commas, and runs:
I heard me say, Tell her anon,
That myself, that's you not I,
Did kill me; and when I felt me die,
I bid me send my heart, when I was gone;
But I alas! could there find none.
When I had ripped me and searched where hearts did lie,
It killed me again that I, who still was true
In life, in my last will should cozen you.
In my own version the only departure which I have made from the
punctuation of the 1633 version is the substitution of a semicolon for
a comma after 'lye' (l. 14). If inverted commas are to be used at all
it seems to me they would need to be extended to 'gone' (l. 12) or
to 'lie' (l. 14). As Donne is addressing the lady throughout it is
difficult to distinguish what he says to her now from what he said on
the occasion imagined.
But the point in which both Chambers and the Grolier Club editor seem
to me in error is in connecting l. 14, _When I had ripp'd, &c. _, with
what follows instead of with the immediately preceding line. There
is no justification for changing the comma after 'none' either to a
semicolon or a full stop. The meaning of ll. 13-14 is, 'But alas! when
I had ripp'd me and search'd where hearts did (i. e. used to) lie, I
could there find none. ' It is so that the Dutch translator understands
the lines:
Maer, oh, ick vond er geen, al scheurd ick mijn geraemt,
En socht door d'oude plaets die 't Hert is toegeraemt.
The last two lines are a comment on the whole incident, the making of
the will and the poet's inability to implement it.
l. 20. _It was intire to none_: i. e. 'It was tied to no one lover. '
The word 'entire' in this sense is still found on public-house signs,
and misled the American Pinkerton in Stevenson's _The Wrecker_.
Compare: 'But this evening I will spie upon the B[ishop] and give you
an account to-morrow morning of his disposition; when, if he cannot be
intire to you, since you are gone so farre downwards in your favours
to me, be pleased to pursue your humiliation so farre as to chuse your
day, and either to suffer the solitude of this place, or to change it,
by such company, as shall waite upon you. ' _Letters_, p. 315 (To . . .
Sir Robert Karre). This seems to mean, 'if the Bishop cannot fulfill,
be faithful to, his engagement to you, come and dine here. '
ll. 21-24. These lines are also printed or punctuated in a misleading
fashion by Chambers and the Grolier Club editor. The former, following
_1669_, but altering the punctuation, prints:
As good as could be made by art
It seemed, and therefore for our loss be sad.
I meant to send that heart instead of mine,
But O! no man could hold it, for 'twas thine.
The 'for our loss be sad' comes in very strangely before the end, nor
is the force of 'and therefore' very clear.
The Grolier Club editor, following the words of _1633_, but altering
the punctuation, reads:
As good as could be made by art
It seemed, and therefore for our losses sad;
I meant to send this heart instead of mine
But oh! no man could hold it, for twas thine.
Apparently the heart was sad for our losses because it was no better
than might be made by art. The confusion arises from deserting
the punctuation of _1633_. 'For our losses sad' is an adjectival
qualification of 'I'. 'I, sad to have lost my heart, which by legacy
was yours, resolved as a _pis aller_ to send this, which seemed as
good as could be made by art. But to send it was impossible, for no
man could hold it. It was thine. '
Huyghens translates:
Soo meenden ick 't verlies dat ick vergelden most
Te boeten met dit Hert, en doen 't u toebehooren:
Maer, oh, 't en kost niet zijn, 't was uw al lang te voren.
But this does not appear to be quite accurate. Huyghens appears to
think that Donne could not give his heart to the lady, because it
was hers already. What he really says is, that no one could keep this
heart of hers, which had taken the place of his own in his bosom,
because, being hers, it was too volatile.
PAGE =21=. A FEAVER.
ll. 13-14. _O wrangling schooles, that search what fire
Shall burne this world. _
'I cannot but marvel from what _Sibyl_ or Oracle they' (the Ancients)
'stole the prophecy of the world's destruction by fire, or whence
Lucan learned to say,
Communis mundo superest rogus, ossibus astra
Misturus.
There yet remaines to th'World one common fire
Wherein our Bones with Stars shall make one pyre.
I believe the World grows near its end, yet is neither old nor
decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruines of its own Principles.
As the work of Creation was above nature, so is its adversary
annihilation; without which the World hath not its end, but its
mutation. Now what force should be able to consume it thus far,
without the breath of God, which is the truest consuming flame, my
Philosophy cannot inform me. ' Browne's _Religio Medici_, sect. 45.
PAGE =22=. AIRE AND ANGELS.
l. 19. _Ev'ry thy haire. _ This, the reading of _1633-39_ and the MSS. ,
is, I think, preferable to the amended 'Thy every hair', &c. , of
the 1650-69 editions (which Chambers adopts, ascribing it to _1669_
alone), though the difference is slight. 'Every thy hair' has the
force of 'Thy every hair' with the additional suggestion of 'even
thy least hair' derived from the construction with a superlative
adjective. 'Every the least remembrance.
body, being composed of contrary elements, has not this essential
immortality: 'In Heaven we doe not say, that our bodies shall devest
their mortality, so, as that naturally they could not dye; for they
shall have a composition still; and every compounded thing may perish;
but they shall be so assured, and with such a preservation, as they
shall alwaies know they shall never dye. ' _Sermons_ 80. 19. 189.
PAGE =8=. SONG.
The first two stanzas of this song are printed in the 1653 edition of
the Poems of Francis Beaumont, with the title _A Raritie_. It is
set to music in Eg. MS. 2013, f. 58. Mr. Chambers points out that
Habington's poem, _Against them who lay Unchastity to the Sex of
Women_ (_Castara_, ed. Elton, p. 231), evidently refers to this poem:
They meet but with unwholesome springs
And summers which infectious are:
They hear but when the meremaid sings,
And only see the falling starre:
Who ever dare
Affirme no woman chaste and faire.
Goe cure your feavers; and you'le say
The Dog-dayes scorch not all the yeare:
In copper mines no longer stay,
But travel to the west, and there
The right ones see,
And grant all gold's not alchimie.
A poem modelled on Donne's appears in Harleian MS. 6057, and in _The
Treasury of Music. By Mr. Lawes and others. _ (1669)
Goe catch a star that's falling from the sky,
Cause an immortal creature for to die;
Stop with thy hand the current of the seas,
Post ore the earth to the Antipodes;
Cause times return and call back yesterday,
Cloake January with the month of May;
Weigh out an ounce of flame, blow back the winde:
And then find faith within a womans minde.
JOHN DUNNE.
l. 2. _Get with child a mandrake root. _ 'Many Mola's and false
conceptions there are of _Mandrakes_, the first from great Antiquity,
conceiveth the Root thereof resembleth the shape of Man. . . . Now
whatever encourageth the first invention, there have not been wanting
many ways of its promotion. The first a Catachrestical and far derived
similitude it holds with Man; that is, in a bifurcation or division of
the Root into two parts, which some are content to call Thighs. ' Sir
Thomas Browne's _Vulgar Errors_ (1686), ii. 6, p. 72. Compare also
_The Progresse of the Soule_, st. xv, p. 300.
PAGE =10=. THE UNDERTAKING.
l. 2. _the Worthies. _ The nine worthies usually named are Joshua,
David, Judas Maccabaeus, Hector, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Arthur,
Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon, but they varied. Guy of Warwick
is mentioned by Gerard Legh, _Accedens of Armorye_. Nash mentions
Solomon and Gideon; and Shakespeare introduces Hercules and Pompey
in _Love's Labour's Lost_. _All the Worthies_ therefore covers a
wide field. The Worthies figured largely in decorative designs and
pageants. On a target taken at the siege of Ostend 'was enammeled
in gold the seven [_sic_] Worthies, worth seven or eight hundred
guilders'. Vere's _Commentaries_ (1657), p. 174.
l. 6. _The skill of specular stone. _ Compare _To the Countesse of
Bedford_, p. 219, ll. 28-30:
You teach (though wee learne not) a thing unknowne
To our late times, the use of specular stone,
Through which all things within without were shown.
Grosart (ii. 48-9) and Professor Norton (Grolier, i. 217) take
'specular' as meaning simply 'translucent', and the latter quotes
Holinshed's _Chronicle_, ii. ch. 10: 'I find obscure mention of the
specular stone also to have been found and applied to this use' (i. e.
glazing windows) 'in England, but in such doubtful sort as I dare
not affirm for certain. ' This is the 'pierre speculaire' or 'pierre a
miroir' which Cotgrave describes as 'A light, white, and transparent
stone, easily cleft into thinne flakes, and used by th' Arabians
(among whom it growes) instead of glasse; anight it represents the
Moon, and even increases or decreases, as the Moon doth'. But surely
Donne refers to crystal-gazing. Paracelsus has a paragraph in the
_Coelum Philosophorum_:
'How to conjure the Crystal so that all Things may
be seen in it.
'To conjure is nothing else than to observe anything rightly, to know
and to understand what it is. The crystal is a figure of the air.
Whatever appears in the air, movable or immovable, the same appears
also in the speculum or crystal as a wave. For the air, the water, and
the crystal, so far as vision is concerned, are one, like a mirror
in which an inverted copy of an object is seen. ' The old name for
crystal-gazers was 'specularii'. Mr. Chambers suggests very probably
that there is a reference to Dr. Dee's magic mirrors or 'show stone',
but one would like to explain the reference to the cutting of the
stone on the one hand, and its being no longer to be found on the
other.
l. 16. _Loves but their oldest clothes. _ The 'her' of _B_ is a
tempting reading in view of the 'woman' which follows, but 'their'
is the common version and the poet's mind passes rapidly to and fro
between the abstract and its concrete embodiments. The proleptic use
of the pronoun is striking in either case.
Compare _To Mrs. M. H. _, p. 217, ll. 31-2.
l. 18. _Vertue attir'd in woman see. _ The reading of the 1633
edition, which is that of the best manuscripts, has more of Donne's
characteristic hyperbole than the metrically more regular 'Vertue in
woman see'. 'If you can see the Idea of Vertue attired in the visible
form of woman and love that. '
PAGE =11=. THE SUNNE RISING.
Compare Ovid, _Amores_, I. 13.
Iam super oceanum venit a seniore marito,
Flava pruinoso quae vehit axe diem.
Quo properas, Aurora?
. . .
Quo properas, ingrata viris, ingrata puellis?
. . .
Tu pueros somno fraudas, tradisque magistris,
Ut subeant tenerae verbera saeva manus.
A comparison of Ovid's simple and natural images and reflections with
Donne's passionate but ingenious hyperboles will show exactly what
Testi meant by his contrast of the homely imagery of classical and the
metaphysical manner of Italian love poetry.
l. 17. _both th' India's of spice and Myne. _ A distinction that Donne
is never tired of. 'The use of the word mine specifically for mines
of gold, silver, or precious stone is, I believe, peculiar to Donne. '
Coleridge, quoted by Norton. The O. E. D. does not contradict this, for
the word had a wider connotation. Compare _Loves exchange_, p. 35, ll.
34-35:
and make more
Mynes in the earth, then Quarries were before.
And _The Progresse of the Soule_, p. 295, l. 17:
thy Western land of Myne.
And for the two Indias: 'As hee that hath a plentifull fortune in
Europe, cares not much though there be no land of perfumes in the
East, nor of gold, in the West-Indies. ' _Sermons_ 50. 15. 123. And
'Sir. Your way into Spain was eastward, and that is the way to the
land of perfumes and spices; their way hither is westward, and that
is the way to the land of gold and of mines,' &c. _To Sir Robert Ker. _
Gosse's _Life, &c. _, ii. 191.
l. 24. _All wealth alchimie_: i. e. imposture or 'glittering dross'
(O. E. D. ). 'Though the show of it were glorious, the substance of it
was dross, and nothing but alchymy and cozenage. ' Harrington, _Orlando
Furioso_ (1591). See also poem cited II. p. 11.
PAGE =12=. THE INDIFFERENT.
l. 7. _dry corke. _ Cork was a favourite metaphor for what was dry
and withered. To our taste it is hardly congruous with love or tragic
poetry, perhaps because of its associations. 'Bind fast his corky
arms,' says Cornwall, speaking of Gloucester (_King Lear_, III. vii.
31), but Shakespeare seems to have taken the epithet from Harsnett's
_Declaration of Egregious Popishe Impostures, &c. _ (1603): 'It would
pose all the cunning exorcists . . . to teach an old corkie woman to
writhe, tumble, curvet,' c. 5, p. 23.
PAGE =13=. LOVES USURY.
l. 5. _My body raigne. _ Grosart and Chambers substitute 'range', from
_1635-69_. Perhaps they are right; but I feel doubtful. All the best
MSS. read 'raigne. ' Donne contrasts the reign of love and the reign of
lust on the body, and frankly declares for the latter. A lover might
range, 'I can love both fair and brown,' but no lover could
mistake by the way
The maid, and tell the lady of that delay.
Adonis, with graver rhetoric, states the other side of Donne's
paradoxical thesis:
Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.
Shakespeare, _Venus and Adonis_, v. cxxxiv.
ll. 13-16. Chambers and Grosart have adopted, with some modification
of punctuation, the reading of the 1633-54 editions, and the lines are
frequently quoted as printed by Chambers:
Only let me love none; no, not the sport
From country-grass to confitures of court,
Or city's quelque-choses; let not report
My mind transport.
I confess I find it difficult to attach any exact meaning to them.
Are there any instances of 'sport' thus used apparently for 'sportive
lady'? The difficulty seems to me to have arisen from the accidental
dropping in the 1633 edition of the semicolon after 'sport', which the
1669 editor rightly restored. What Donne means by 'the sport' is clear
enough from other passages, e. g. 'the short scorn of a bridegroom's
play' (_Loves Alchimie_), 'as she would man should despise the sport'
(_Farewell to Love_). The prayer that report _may_ ('let', not 'let
not') carry his roving fancy from one to another, is in keeping
with the whole tenor of the poem. The Grolier Club edition has the
punctuation I have given, which I had adopted before I saw that
edition. I find it difficult to attach any meaning to 'let not
report'.
PAGE =14=. THE CANONIZATION.
l. 7. _Or the Kings reall, or his stamped face Contemplate. _ Donne's
conceits reappear in his sermons in a different setting. 'Beloved in
Christ Jesus, the heart of your gracious God is set upon you; and we
his servants have told you so, and brought you thus neare him, into
his Court, into his house, into the Church, but yet we cannot get
you to see his face, to come to that tendernesse of conscience as to
remember and consider that all your most secret actions are done in
his sight and his presence; Caesars face, and Caesars inscription you
can see: The face of the Prince in his coyne you can rise before the
Sun to see, and sit up till mid-night to see; but if you do not see
the face of God upon every piece of that mony too, all that mony is
counterfeit; If Christ have not brought that fish to the hook, that
brings the mony in the mouth (as he did to _Peter_) that mony is ill
fished for. ' _Sermons_ 80. 12. 122.
l. 15. 'Man' is the reading of every MS.
except _Lec_, which here
as in several other little details appears to resemble _1633_ more
closely than either of the other MSS. , _D_, _H49_. It is quite
possible that 'man' is correct--a vivid and concrete touch, but in
view of the 'men' which follows 'more' is preferable. The two words
are frequently interchanged in the MSS.
ll. 24-5. The punctuation of these lines is that of _D_, _H49_,
_Lec_, though I adopted it independently as required by the sense. The
editions put a full stop after each line. Chambers alters the first
(l. 24) to a semicolon and connects
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
with the two preceding lines. To me it seems the line _must_ go with
what follows, and that 'so' (which should have no comma) is not an
illative conjunction but a subordinate conjunction of effect. 'Both
sexes fit _so_ entirely into one neutral thing that we die and rise
the same,' &c. The Grolier Club editor, like Chambers, connects the
line with what has gone before, but drops the comma after 'so', making
it an adverb of degree.
ll. 37-45. _And thus invoke us, &c. _ Grosart and Chambers have
disguised and altered the sense of this stanza. Grosart, indeed, by
printing 'Who did the whole world's extract', has made it completely
unintelligible. Chambers's version gives a meaning, but a wrong one.
He prints the last six lines thus:
Who did the whole worlds soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes;
So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize--
Countries, towns, courts beg from above
A pattern of your love.
These harsh constructions are not Donne's. The object of 'drove' is
not the 'world's soul', but 'Countries, towns, courts'; and 'beg' is
not in the indicative but the imperative mood. For clearness' sake
I have bracketed ll. 42-3 and printed 'love! ' otherwise leaving the
punctuation unchanged.
Donne as usual is pedantically accurate in the details of his
metaphor. The canonized lovers are invoked as saints, i. e. _their
prayers are requested_. They are asked to beg from above a pattern of
their love for those below. Of prayers to saints Donne speaks in one
of his _Letters_, p. 181: 'I see not how I can admit that circuit of
sending them' (i. e. letters) 'to you to be sent hither; that seems a
kinde of praying to Saints, to whom God must tell first, that such a
man prays to them to pray to him. '
l. 40. The 'contract' of the printed editions is doubtless correct,
despite the preference of the MSS. for 'extract'. This goes in several
MSS. with other errors which show confusion. _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ read
'and drawe', a bad rhyme; and _A18_, _N_, _TCC_ (the verse is lost in
_TCD_) drop 'soule', reading 'the world extract'. The reading
'extract' is due to what Dr. Moore calls 'the extraordinary
short-sightedness of the copyists in respect of a construction. Their
vision seems often to be bounded by a single line. ' To 'extract the
soul' of things is a not uncommon phrase with Donne. Here it does not
suit the thought which is coming so well as 'contract': 'As the spirit
and soule of the whole booke of Psalmes is contracted into this
psalme, so is the spirit and soule of this whole psalme contracted
into this verse. ' _Sermons_ 80. 66. 663. (Psal. lxiii. 7. _Because
thou hast beene my helpe, Therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I
rejoice. _)
l. 45. _A patterne of your love. _ The 'of our love' of 1633 _might_
mean 'for our love', but it is clear from the manner in which
this stanza is given in _D_ that the copyist has misunderstood the
construction--'our love' follows from the assumption that 'Countries,
Townes, Courts' is the subject to 'Beg'. The colon and the capital
letter would not make such a view impossible, as they might be given a
merely emphasizing value; or if regarded as imperative the 'Beg' might
be taken as in the third person: 'Countries, Townes, Courts--let them
beg,' &c. Compare:
The God of Souldiers:
With the consent of supreame Jove, informe
Thy thoughts with Noblenesse.
Shakespeare, _Cor. _ V. iii. 70-2 (Simpson, _Shakespearian
Punctuation_, p. 98).
But clearly here 'Beg' is in the second person plural, predicate to
'You whom reverend love', and 'your love' is the right reading.
PAGE =16=. THE TRIPLE FOOLE.
He is trebly a fool because (1) he loves, (2) he expresses his love in
verse, (3) he thereby enables some one to set the verse to music and
by singing it to re-awaken the passion which composition had lulled to
sleep.
PAGE =17=. LOVERS INFINITENESS.
This song, which is one of the obviously authentic lyrics which is
not included in the _A18_, _N_, _TC_ collection, would seem to have
undergone some revision after its first issue. The version given in
_A25_, from which _Cy_ is copied, would seem to be the original,
at least the readings of ll. 25-6 and ll. 29-30 do not look like
corruptions. The reading 'beget' at l. 25 gives a better rhyme to
'yet' than 'admit'. In l. 29 _A25_ has obviously interchanged 'thine'
and 'mine'. The slightly different version of _JC_ gives the correct
order. The generally careful _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ group has an unusually
faulty text of this poem. Among other mistakes it reads (with _S96_)
'Thee' for 'them' in l. 32.
'Lovers Infiniteness' is a strange title. It is not found in any
of the MSS. , and possibly should be 'Loves Infiniteness'. Yet the
'Lovers' suits the closing thought:
so we shall
Be one, and one anothers All.
For a poem in obvious imitation of this, see _Appendix C_, p. 439.
ll. 1-11. The rhetoric and rhythm of Donne's elaborate stanzas depends
a good deal on their right punctuation. Mine is an attempt to correct
that of _1633_ without modernizing. The full stop after 'fall' is
obviously an error, and so is, I think, the comma after 'spent'. The
first six lines state in a rapid succession of clauses all that the
poet has done to gain his lady's love. A new thought begins with 'Yet
no more', &c.
l. 9. _generall_ is the reading of two MSS. which are practically one.
I have recorded it because (1) ll. 29-30 (see textual note) would seem
to suggest that their version of the poem is an early one (revised by
Donne), and this may be an early reading; (2) because in l. 20 this
epithet is used as though repeated, 'thy gift being generall. ' It
would be not unlike Donne to quibble with the word, making it mean
first a gift made generally to all, and secondly a gift general in its
content, not limited or defined in any way. The whole poem is a piece
of legal quibbling not unlike Shakespeare's 87th Sonnet:
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate, &c.
PAGE =18=. SONG.
_Sweetest love, &c. _ Of the music to this and 'Send home my long
stray'd eyes' I can discover no trace. _The Baite_ was doubtless sung
to the same air as Marlowe's 'Come live with me'. See II. p. 57.
ll. 6-8. I have retained the text of _1633_, which has the support of
all the MSS. That of _1635-54_ is an attempt to accommodate the lines,
by a little padding, to the rhythm of the corresponding lines in the
other stanzas.
PAGE =20=. THE LEGACIE.
ll. 9-16. I HEARD ME SAY, _&c. _ The construction of this verse has
proved rather a difficulty to editors. I give it as printed by
Chambers and by the Grolier Club editor. Chambers's modernized version
runs:
I heard me say, 'Tell her anon,
That myself', that is you not I,
'Did kill me', and when I felt me die,
I bid me send my heart, when I was gone;
But I alas! could there find none;
When I had ripp'd and search'd where hearts should lie,
It killed me again, that I who still was true
In life, in my last will should cozen you.
The Grolier Club version has no inverted commas, and runs:
I heard me say, Tell her anon,
That myself, that's you not I,
Did kill me; and when I felt me die,
I bid me send my heart, when I was gone;
But I alas! could there find none.
When I had ripped me and searched where hearts did lie,
It killed me again that I, who still was true
In life, in my last will should cozen you.
In my own version the only departure which I have made from the
punctuation of the 1633 version is the substitution of a semicolon for
a comma after 'lye' (l. 14). If inverted commas are to be used at all
it seems to me they would need to be extended to 'gone' (l. 12) or
to 'lie' (l. 14). As Donne is addressing the lady throughout it is
difficult to distinguish what he says to her now from what he said on
the occasion imagined.
But the point in which both Chambers and the Grolier Club editor seem
to me in error is in connecting l. 14, _When I had ripp'd, &c. _, with
what follows instead of with the immediately preceding line. There
is no justification for changing the comma after 'none' either to a
semicolon or a full stop. The meaning of ll. 13-14 is, 'But alas! when
I had ripp'd me and search'd where hearts did (i. e. used to) lie, I
could there find none. ' It is so that the Dutch translator understands
the lines:
Maer, oh, ick vond er geen, al scheurd ick mijn geraemt,
En socht door d'oude plaets die 't Hert is toegeraemt.
The last two lines are a comment on the whole incident, the making of
the will and the poet's inability to implement it.
l. 20. _It was intire to none_: i. e. 'It was tied to no one lover. '
The word 'entire' in this sense is still found on public-house signs,
and misled the American Pinkerton in Stevenson's _The Wrecker_.
Compare: 'But this evening I will spie upon the B[ishop] and give you
an account to-morrow morning of his disposition; when, if he cannot be
intire to you, since you are gone so farre downwards in your favours
to me, be pleased to pursue your humiliation so farre as to chuse your
day, and either to suffer the solitude of this place, or to change it,
by such company, as shall waite upon you. ' _Letters_, p. 315 (To . . .
Sir Robert Karre). This seems to mean, 'if the Bishop cannot fulfill,
be faithful to, his engagement to you, come and dine here. '
ll. 21-24. These lines are also printed or punctuated in a misleading
fashion by Chambers and the Grolier Club editor. The former, following
_1669_, but altering the punctuation, prints:
As good as could be made by art
It seemed, and therefore for our loss be sad.
I meant to send that heart instead of mine,
But O! no man could hold it, for 'twas thine.
The 'for our loss be sad' comes in very strangely before the end, nor
is the force of 'and therefore' very clear.
The Grolier Club editor, following the words of _1633_, but altering
the punctuation, reads:
As good as could be made by art
It seemed, and therefore for our losses sad;
I meant to send this heart instead of mine
But oh! no man could hold it, for twas thine.
Apparently the heart was sad for our losses because it was no better
than might be made by art. The confusion arises from deserting
the punctuation of _1633_. 'For our losses sad' is an adjectival
qualification of 'I'. 'I, sad to have lost my heart, which by legacy
was yours, resolved as a _pis aller_ to send this, which seemed as
good as could be made by art. But to send it was impossible, for no
man could hold it. It was thine. '
Huyghens translates:
Soo meenden ick 't verlies dat ick vergelden most
Te boeten met dit Hert, en doen 't u toebehooren:
Maer, oh, 't en kost niet zijn, 't was uw al lang te voren.
But this does not appear to be quite accurate. Huyghens appears to
think that Donne could not give his heart to the lady, because it
was hers already. What he really says is, that no one could keep this
heart of hers, which had taken the place of his own in his bosom,
because, being hers, it was too volatile.
PAGE =21=. A FEAVER.
ll. 13-14. _O wrangling schooles, that search what fire
Shall burne this world. _
'I cannot but marvel from what _Sibyl_ or Oracle they' (the Ancients)
'stole the prophecy of the world's destruction by fire, or whence
Lucan learned to say,
Communis mundo superest rogus, ossibus astra
Misturus.
There yet remaines to th'World one common fire
Wherein our Bones with Stars shall make one pyre.
I believe the World grows near its end, yet is neither old nor
decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruines of its own Principles.
As the work of Creation was above nature, so is its adversary
annihilation; without which the World hath not its end, but its
mutation. Now what force should be able to consume it thus far,
without the breath of God, which is the truest consuming flame, my
Philosophy cannot inform me. ' Browne's _Religio Medici_, sect. 45.
PAGE =22=. AIRE AND ANGELS.
l. 19. _Ev'ry thy haire. _ This, the reading of _1633-39_ and the MSS. ,
is, I think, preferable to the amended 'Thy every hair', &c. , of
the 1650-69 editions (which Chambers adopts, ascribing it to _1669_
alone), though the difference is slight. 'Every thy hair' has the
force of 'Thy every hair' with the additional suggestion of 'even
thy least hair' derived from the construction with a superlative
adjective. 'Every the least remembrance.
