_at their best
Sweetnesse and wit, they'are but Mummy, possest.
Sweetnesse and wit, they'are but Mummy, possest.
Donne - 2
)
A similar phenomenon is noted by Donne: 'A Torch in a misty night,
seemeth greater then in a clear. ' _Sermons_ 50. 36. 326.
PAGE =34=. LOVES EXCHANGE.
l. 11. _A non obstante_: a privilege, a waiving of any law in favour
of an individual: 'Who shall give any other interpretation, any
modification, any _Non obstante_ upon his law in my behalf, when he
comes to judge me according to that law which himself hath made. '
_Sermons_ 50. 12. 97. 'A _Non obstante_ and priviledge to doe a sinne
before hand. ' Ibid. 50. 35. 313.
l. 14. _minion_: i. e. 'one specially favoured or beloved; a dearest
friend' &c. O. E. D. Not used in a contemptuous sense. '_John_ the
Minion of _Christ_ upon earth, and survivor of the Apostles, (whose
books rather seem fallen from Heaven, and writ with the hand which
ingraved the stone Tables, then a mans work)' &c. _Sermons_ 50. 33.
309.
ll. 29 f. Dryden borrows:
Great God of Love, why hast thou made
A Face that can all Hearts command,
That all Religions can invade,
And change the Laws of ev'ry Land?
_A Song to a fair Young Lady Going out of Town in
the Spring. _
PAGE =36=. CONFINED LOVE.
Compare with this the poem _Loves Freedome_ in Beaumont's _Poems_
(1652), sig. E. 6:
Why should man be only ty'd
To a foolish Female thing,
When all Creatures else beside,
Birds and Beasts, change every Spring?
Who would then to one be bound,
When so many may be found?
The third verse runs:
Would you think him wise that now
Still one sort of meat doth eat,
When both Sea and Land allow
Sundry sorts of other meat?
Who would then, &c.
Poems on such themes were doubtless exercises of wit at which more
than one author tried his hand in rivalry with his fellows.
l. 16. _And not to seeke new lands, or not to deale withall. _ I have,
after some consideration, adhered to the _1633_ reading. Chambers has
adopted that of the later editions, taking the line to mean that a man
builds ships in order to seek new lands and to deal or trade with all
lands. But ships cannot trade with inland countries. The form 'withal'
is the regular one for 'with' when it follows the noun it governs.
'We build ships not to let them lie in harbours but to seek new lands
with, and to trade with. ' The MS. evidence is not of much assistance,
because it is not clear in all cases what 'w^{th} all' stands for. The
words were sometimes separated even when the simple preposition
was intended. 'People, such as I have dealt with all in their
marchaundyse. ' Berners' _Froissart_, I. cclxvii. 395 (O. E. D. ). But
_D_, _H49_, _Lec_ read 'w^{th} All', supporting Chambers.
For the sentiment compare:
A stately builded ship well rig'd and tall
The Ocean maketh more majesticall:
Why vowest thou to live in Sestos here,
Who on Loves seas more glorious would appeare.
Marlowe, _Hero and Leander_: _First Sestiad_ 219-222.
For 'deale withall' compare:
For ye have much adoe to deale withal.
Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, VI. i. 10.
PAGE =37=. THE DREAME.
ll. 1-10. _Deare love, for nothing lesse then thee
Would I have broke this happy dreame,
It was a theame
For reason, much too strong for phantasie,
Therefore thou wak'dst me wisely; yet
My Dreame thou brok'st not, but continued'st it,
Thou art so truth, that thoughts of thee suffice,
To make dreames truths; and fables histories;
Enter these armes, &c. _
I have left the punctuation of the first stanza unaltered. The sense
is clear and any modernization alters the rhetoric. Chambers places a
semicolon after 'dreame' and a full stop after 'phantasie'. The
last is certainly wrong, for the statement 'It was a theme', &c. is
connected not with what precedes, but with what follows, 'Therefore
thou waked'st me wisely. ' In like manner Chambers's full stop
after 'but continued'st it' breaks the close connexion with the two
following lines, which are really an adverbial clause of explanation
or reason. 'My dream thou brokest not, but continued'st it,' for 'Thou
art so truth', &c. A full stop might more justifiably be placed after
'histories', but the semicolon is more in Donne's manner.
l. 7. _Thou art so truth. _ The evidence of the MSS. shows that both
'truth' and 'true' were current versions and explains the alteration
of _1635-69_. But 'truth' is both the more difficult reading and
the more subtle expression of Donne's thought; 'true' is the obvious
emendation of less metaphysical copyists and editors. Donne's 'Love'
is not true as opposed to false only; she is 'truth' as opposed
to dreams or phantasms or aught that partakes of unreality. She is
essentially truth as God is: 'Respondeo dicendum quod . . . veritas
invenitur in intellectu, secundum quod apprehendit rem ut est; et
in re, secundum quod habet esse conformabile intellectui. Hoc autem
maxime invenitur in Deo. Nam esse eius non solum est conforme suo
intelligere; et suum intelligere est mensura et causa omnis alterius
esse, et omnis alterius intellectus; et ipse est suum esse et
intelligere. Unde sequitur quod non solum in ipso sit veritas, sed
quod ipse sit ipsa summa et prima veritas. _Summa_ I. vi. 5.
To deify the object of your love was a common topic of love-poetry;
Donne does so with all the subtleties of scholastic theology at his
finger-ends. In this single poem he attributes to the lady addressed
two attributes of Deity, (1) the identity of being and essence, (2)
the power of reading the thoughts directly.
The Dutch poet keeps this point:
de Waerheyt is so ghy, en
Ghy zijt de Waerheyt so.
ll. 11-12. _As lightning, or a Tapers light
Thine eyes, and not thy noise wak'd mee. _
'A sodain light brought into a room doth awaken some men; but yet a
noise does it better. ' _Sermons_ 50. 38. 344.
'A candle wakes some men as well as a noise. ' _Sermons_ 80. 61. 617.
ll. 15-16. _But when I saw thou sawest my heart,
And knew'st my thoughts, beyond an Angels art. _
Modern editors, by removing the comma after 'thoughts', have altered
the sense of these lines. It is not that she could read his thoughts
better than an angel, but that she could read them at all, a power
which is not granted to Angels.
St. Thomas (_Summa Theol. _ Quaest. lvii. Art. 4) discusses 'Utrum
angeli cognoscant cogitationes cordium', and concludes, 'Cognoscunt
Angeli cordium cogitationes in suis effectibus: ut autem in se ipsis
sunt, Deo tantum sunt naturaliter cognitae. ' Angels may read our
thoughts by subtler signs than our words and acts, or even those
changes of countenance and pulsation which we note in each other,
'quanto subtilius huiusmodi immutationes occultas corporales
perpendunt. ' But to know them as they are in the intellect and will
belongs only to God, to whom only the freedom of the human will is
subject, and a man's thoughts are subject to his will. 'Manifestum
est autem, quod ex sola voluntate dependet, quod aliquis actu aliqua
consideret; quia cum aliquis habet habitum scientiae, vel species
intelligibiles in eo existentes, utitur eis cum vult. Et ideo dicit
Apostolus I Corinth. secundo: quod _quae sunt hominis, nemo novit nisi
spiritus hominis qui in ipso est_. '
Donne recurs to this theme very frequently: 'Let the Schoole dispute
infinitely (for he that will not content himself with means of
salvation till all Schoole points be reconciled, will come too late);
let Scotus and his Heard think, That Angels, and separate souls have a
naturall power to understand thoughts . . . And let Aquinas present his
arguments to the contrary, That those spirits have no naturall power
to know thoughts; we seek no farther, but that Jesus Christ himself
thought it argument enough to convince the Scribes and Pharisees,
and prove himself God, by knowing their thoughts. _Eadem Maiestate
et potentia_ sayes _S. Hierome_, Since you see I proceed as God, in
knowing your thoughts, why beleeve you not that I may forgive his sins
as God too? ' _Sermons_ 80. 11. 111; and compare also _Sermons_ 80. 9.
92.
This point is also preserved in the Dutch version:
Maer als ick u sagh sien wat om mijn hertje lagh
En weten wat ick docht (dat Engel noyt en sagh).
M. Legouis in a recent French version has left it ambiguous:
Mais quand j'ai vu que tu voyais mon coeur
Et savais mes pensées au dela du savoir d'un ange.
The MS. reading, 14 'but an Angel', heightens the antithesis.
ll. 27-8. _Perchance as torches which must ready bee
Men light and put out. _
'If it' (i. e. a torch) 'have _never_ been _lighted_, it does not
easily take light, but it must be _bruised_ and _beaten_ first; if
it have been lighted and put out, though it cannot take fire _of it
self_, yet it does easily conceive fire, if it be presented within any
convenient distance. ' _Sermons_ 50. 36. 332.
PAGE =38=. A VALEDICTION: OF WEEPING.
ll. 1-9. I have changed the comma at l. 6 to a semicolon, as the first
image, that of the coins, closes here. Chambers places a full stop
at l. 4 'worth', and apparently connects the next two lines with what
follows--wrongly, I think. Finishing the figure of the coins, coined,
stamped, and given their value by her, Donne passes on to a couple of
new images. 'The tears are fruits of much grief; but they are symbols
of more to come. For, as your image perishes in each tear that falls,
so shall we perish, be nothing, when between us rolls the "salt,
estranging sea". '
It is, I suppose, by an inadvertence that Chambers has left 'divers'
unchanged to 'diverse'. I cannot think there is any reference to 'a
diver in the pearly seas'. Grolier and the Dutch poet divide as here:
Laet voor uw aengesicht mijn trouwe tranen vallen,
Want van dat aengensicht ontfangen sy uw' munt,
En rijsen tot de waerd dies' uwe stempel gunt
Bevrucht van uw' gedaent: vrucht van veel' ongevallen,
Maer teekenen van meer, daer ghy valt met den traen,
Die van u swanger was, en beyde wy ontdaen
Verdwijnen, soo wy op verscheiden oever staen.
PAGE =39=. LOVES ALCHYMIE.
l. 7. _th'Elixar_: i. e. 'the Elixir Vitae', which heals all disease
and indefinitely prolongs life. It is sometimes identified with the
philosopher's stone, which transmutes metals to gold. In speaking of
quintessences (see note, II. p. 30) Paracelsus declares that there are
certain quintessences superior to those of gold, marchasite, precious
stones, &c. , 'of more importance than that they should be called a
quintessence. It should be rather spoken of as a certain secret and
mystery . . . Among these arcana we here put forward four. Of these
arcana the first is the mercury of life, the second is the primal
matter, the third is the Philosopher's Stone, and the fourth the
tincture. But although these arcana are rather angelical than human to
speak of we shall not shrink from them. ' From the description he gives
they all seem to operate more or less alike, purging metals and other
bodies from disease.
ll. 7-10. _And as no chymique yet, &c. _ 'My Lord Chancellor gave me
so noble and so ready a dispatch, accompanied with so fatherly advice
that I am now, like an alchemist, delighted with discoveries by the
way, though I attain not mine end. ' To . . . Sir H. G. , Gosse's _Life,
&c. _, ii. 49.
ll. 23-4.
_at their best
Sweetnesse and wit, they'are but Mummy, possest. _
The punctuation of these lines in _1633-54_ is ambiguous, and Chambers
has altered it wrongly to
Sweetness and wit they are, but Mummy possest.
The MSS. generally support the punctuation which I have adopted, which
is that of the Grolier Club edition.
PAGE =40=. THE FLEA.
I have restored this poem to the place it occupied in _1633_. In
_1635_ it was placed first of all the _Songs and Sonets_. A strange
choice to our mind, but apparently the poem was greatly admired as
a masterpiece of wit. It is the first of the pieces translated by
Huyghens:
De Vloy.
Slaet acht op deze Vloy, en leert wat overleggen,
Hoe slechten ding het is dat ghy my kont ontzeggen, &c. ,
and was selected for special commendation by some of his
correspondents. Coleridge comments upon it in verse:
Be proud as Spaniards. Leap for pride, ye Fleas!
In natures _minim_ realm ye're now grandees.
Skip-jacks no more, nor civiller skip-johns;
Thrice-honored Fleas! I greet you all as _Dons_.
In Phoebus' archives registered are ye,
And this your patent of nobility.
It will be noticed that there are two versions of Donne's poem.
PAGE =41=. THE CURSE.
l. 3. _His only, and only his purse. _ This, the reading of all the
editions except the last, and of the MSS. , is obviously right. What
is to dispose 'some dull heart to love' is his _only_ purse and _his_
alone, no one's but his purse. Chambers adopts the _1669_ conjecture,
'Him only for his purse,' but in that case there is no subject to 'may
dispose', or if 'some dull heart' be subject then 'itself' must be
supplied--a harsh construction. 'Dispose' is not used intransitively
in this sense.
l. 27. _Mynes. _ I have adopted the plural from the MSS. It brings it
into line with the other objects mentioned.
PAGE =43=. THE MESSAGE.
l. 11. _But if it be taught by thine. _ It seems incredible that Donne
should have written 'which if it' &c. immediately after the 'which'
of the preceding line. I had thought that the _1633_ printer had
accidentally repeated from the line above, but the evidence of the
MSS. points to the mistake (if it is a mistake) being older than that.
'Which' was in the MS. used by the printer. If 'But' is not Donne's
own reading or emendation it ought to be, and I am loath to injure a
charming poem by pedantic adherence to authority in so small a point.
_De minimis non curat lex_; but art cares very much indeed. _JC_ and
_P_ read 'Yet since it hath learn'd by thine'.
ll. 14 f. _And crosse both
Word and oath, &c. _
The 'crosse' of all the MSS. is pretty certainly what Donne wrote. An
editor would change to 'break' hardly the other way. To 'crosse' is,
of course, to 'cancel'. Compare Jonson's _Poetaster_, Act II, Scene i:
Faith, sir, your mercer's Book
Will tell you with more patience, then I can
(For I am crost, and so's not that I thinke. )
and
Examine well thy beauty with my truth,
And cross my cares, ere greater sums arise.
Daniel, _Delia_, i.
PAGE =44=. A NOCTURNALL, &c.
l. 12. _For I am every dead thing. _ I have not thought it right to
alter the _1633_ 'every' to the 'very' of _1635-69_. 'Every' has some
MS. support, and it is the more difficult reading, though of course 'a
very' might easily enough be misread. But I rather think that 'every'
expresses what Donne means. He is 'every dead thing' because he is the
quintessence of all negations--'absence, darkness, death: things which
are not', and more than that, 'the first nothing. '
ll. 14-18. _For his art did expresse . . . things which are not. _ This
is a difficult stanza in a difficult poem. I have after considerable
hesitation adopted the punctuation of _1719_, which is followed by all
the modern editors. This makes 'dull privations' and 'lean emptinesse'
expansions of 'nothingnesse'. This is the simpler construction. I am
not sure, however, that the punctuation of the earlier editions and of
the MSS. may not be correct. In that case 'From dull privations' goes
with 'he ruined me'. Milton speaks of 'ruining from Heaven'. 'From me,
who was nothing', says Donne, 'Love extracted the very quintessence
of nothingness--made me more nothing than I already was. My state was
already one of "dull privation" and "lean emptiness", and Love reduced
it still further, making me once more the non-entity I was before
I was created. ' Only Donne could be guilty of such refined and
extravagant subtlety. But probably this is to refine too much. There
is no example of 'ruining' as an active verb used in this fashion.
A feature of the MS. collection from which this poem was probably
printed is the omission of stops at the end of the line. In the next
verse Donne pushes the annihilation further. Made nothing by Love,
by the death of her he loves he is made the elixir (i. e. the
quintessence) not now of ordinary nothing, but of 'the first nothing',
the nothing which preceded God's first act of creation. The poem turns
upon the thought of degrees in nothingness.
For 'elixir' as identical with 'quintessence' see Oxf. Eng. Dict. ,
_Elixir_, † iii. b, and the quotation there, 'A distill'd
quintessence, a pure elixar of mischief, pestilent alike to all. '
Milton, _Church Govt. _
Of the 'first Nothing' Donne speaks in the _Essays in Divinity_
(Jessop, 1855), pp. 80-1, but in a rather different strain: 'To speak
truth freely there was no such Nothing as this' (the nothing which a
man might wish to be) 'before the beginning: for he that hath refined
all the old definitions hath put this ingredient _Creabile_ (which
cannot be absolutely nothing) into his definition of creation; and
that Nothing which was, we cannot desire; for man's will is not larger
than God's power: and since Nothing was not a pre-existent matter, nor
mother of this all, but only a limitation when any thing began to be;
how impossible it is to return to that first point of time, since God
(if it imply contradiction) cannot reduce yesterday? Of this we
will say no more; for this Nothing being no creature; is more
incomprehensible than all the rest. '
ll. 31-2. The Grolier Club edition reads:
I should prefer
If I were any beast; some end, some means;
which is to me unintelligible. 'If I were a beast, I should prefer
some end, some means' refers to the Aristotelian and Schools doctrine
of the soul. The soul of man is rational and self-conscious; of beasts
perceptive and moving, therefore able to select ends and means; the
vegetative soul of plants selects what it can feed on and rejects what
it cannot, and so far detests and loves. Even stones, which have no
souls, attract and repel. But even of stones Donne says: 'We are not
sure that stones have not life; stones may have life; neither (to
speak humanely) is it unreasonably thought by them, that thought the
whole world to be inanimated by one soule, and to be one intire living
creature; and in that respect does S. Augustine prefer a fly before
the Sun, because a fly hath life, and the Sun hath not. ' _Sermons_ 80.
7. 69-70.
l. 35. _If I an ordinary nothing were. _ 'A shadow is nothing, yet, if
the rising or falling sun shines out and there be no shadow, I will
pronounce there is no body in that place neither. Ceremonies are
nothing; but where there are no ceremonies, order, and obedience, and
at last (and quickly) religion itself will vanish. ' _Sermons_ (quoted
in _Selections from Donne_, 1840).
l. 41. _Enjoy your summer all_; This is Grosart's punctuation. The old
editions have a comma. Chambers, obviously quite wrongly, retains the
comma, and closes the sentence in the next line. The clause 'Since she
enjoys her long night's festival' explains 43 'Let me prepare towards
her', &c. , _not_ 41 'Enjoy your summer all'.
PAGE =47=. THE APPARITION.
ll. 1-13. The Grolier Club editor places a full stop, Chambers a
colon, after 'shrinke', for the comma of the old editions. Chambers's
division is better than the first, which interrupts the steady run of
the thought to the climax,
A verier ghost than I.
The original punctuation preserves the rapid, crowded march of the
clauses.
l. 10. This line throws light on the character of the _1669_ text.
The correct reading of _1633_ was spoiled in _1635_ by accidentally
dropping 'will', and this error continued through _1639-54_. The 1669
editor, detecting the metrical fault, made the line decasyllabic by
interpolating 'a' and 'even'.
PAGE =48=. THE BROKEN HEART.
l. 8. _A flaske of powder burne a day. _ The 'flash' of later editions
is probably a conjectural emendation, for 'flaske' (_1633_ and many
MSS. ) makes good sense; and the metaphor of a burning flask of powder
seems to suit exactly the later lines which describe what happened to
the heart which love inflamed
but Love, alas,
At one first blow did shiver it as glasse.
Shakespeare uses the same simile in a different connexion:
Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,
Mis-shapen in the conduct of them both:
Like powder in a skilless soldiers flaske,
Is set a fire by thine own ignorance,
And thou dismembred with thine owne defence.
_Romeo and Juliet_, III. iii. 130.
l. 14. _and never chawes_: 'chaw' is the form Donne generally uses:
'Implicite beleevers, ignorant beleevers, the adversary may swallow;
but the understanding beleever, he must chaw, and pick bones, before
he come to assimilate him, and make him like himself. ' _Sermons_ 80.
18. 178.
PAGE =49=. A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING MOURNING.
This poem is quoted by Walton after his account of the vision which
Donne had of his wife in France, in 1612: 'I forbear the readers
farther trouble as to the relation and what concerns it, and will
conclude mine with commending to his view a copy of verses given by
Mr. Donne to his wife at the time that he then parted from her: and
I beg leave to tell, that I have heard some critics, learned both in
languages and poetry, say, that none of the Greek or Latin poets did
ever equal them. ' The critics probably included Wotton,--perhaps also
Hales, whose criticism of Shakespeare shows the same readiness to find
our own poets as good as the Ancients.
The song, 'Sweetest love I do not go,' was probably written at the
same time. It is almost identical in tone. They are certainly the
tenderest of Donne's love poems, perhaps the only ones to which the
epithet 'tender' can be applied. The _Valediction: of weeping_ is more
passionate.
An early translation of this poem into Greek verse is found in a
volume in the Bodleian Library.
ll. 9-12. _Moving of th'earth, &c. _ 'The "trepidation" was the
precession of the equinoxes, supposed, according to the Ptolemaic
astronomy, to be caused by the movements of the Ninth or Crystalline
Sphere. ' Chambers.
First you see fixt in this huge mirrour blew,
Of trembling lights, a number numberlesse:
Fixt they are nam'd, but with a name untrue,
For they all moove and in a Daunce expresse
That great long yeare, that doth contain no lesse
Then threescore hundreds of those yeares in all,
Which the sunne makes with his course naturall.
What if to you those sparks disordered seem
As if by chaunce they had beene scattered there?
The gods a solemne measure doe it deeme,
And see a iust proportion every where,
And know the points whence first their movings were;
To which first points when all returne againe,
The axel-tree of Heav'n shall breake in twain.
Sir John Davies, _Orchestra_, 35-6.
l. 16. _Those things which elemented it. _ Chambers follows _1669_ and
reads 'The thing'--wrongly, I think. 'Elemented' is just 'composed',
and the things are enumerated later, 20. 'eyes, lips, hands. ' Compare:
But neither chance nor compliment
Did element our love.
Katharine Phillips (Orinda), _To Mrs. M. A. at parting_.
This and the fellow poem _Upon Absence_ may be compared with Donne's
poems on the same theme. See Saintsbury's _Caroline Poets_, i, pp.
548, 550.
l. 20. _and hands_: 'and' has the support of _all_ the MSS. The want
of it is no great loss, for though without it the line moves a little
irregularly, 'and hands' is not a pleasant concatenation.
ll. 25-36. _If they be two, &c. _ Donne's famous simile has a close
parallel in Omar Khayyam. Whether Donne's 'hydroptic immoderate thirst
of humane learning and languages' extended to Persian I do not know.
Captain Harris has supplied me with translations and reference:
In these twin compasses, O Love, you see
One body with two heads, like you and me,
Which wander round one centre, circle wise,
But at the last in one same point agree.
Whinfield's edition of _Omar Khayyam_ (Kegan Paul,
Trübner, 1901, Oriental Series, p. 216).
A similar phenomenon is noted by Donne: 'A Torch in a misty night,
seemeth greater then in a clear. ' _Sermons_ 50. 36. 326.
PAGE =34=. LOVES EXCHANGE.
l. 11. _A non obstante_: a privilege, a waiving of any law in favour
of an individual: 'Who shall give any other interpretation, any
modification, any _Non obstante_ upon his law in my behalf, when he
comes to judge me according to that law which himself hath made. '
_Sermons_ 50. 12. 97. 'A _Non obstante_ and priviledge to doe a sinne
before hand. ' Ibid. 50. 35. 313.
l. 14. _minion_: i. e. 'one specially favoured or beloved; a dearest
friend' &c. O. E. D. Not used in a contemptuous sense. '_John_ the
Minion of _Christ_ upon earth, and survivor of the Apostles, (whose
books rather seem fallen from Heaven, and writ with the hand which
ingraved the stone Tables, then a mans work)' &c. _Sermons_ 50. 33.
309.
ll. 29 f. Dryden borrows:
Great God of Love, why hast thou made
A Face that can all Hearts command,
That all Religions can invade,
And change the Laws of ev'ry Land?
_A Song to a fair Young Lady Going out of Town in
the Spring. _
PAGE =36=. CONFINED LOVE.
Compare with this the poem _Loves Freedome_ in Beaumont's _Poems_
(1652), sig. E. 6:
Why should man be only ty'd
To a foolish Female thing,
When all Creatures else beside,
Birds and Beasts, change every Spring?
Who would then to one be bound,
When so many may be found?
The third verse runs:
Would you think him wise that now
Still one sort of meat doth eat,
When both Sea and Land allow
Sundry sorts of other meat?
Who would then, &c.
Poems on such themes were doubtless exercises of wit at which more
than one author tried his hand in rivalry with his fellows.
l. 16. _And not to seeke new lands, or not to deale withall. _ I have,
after some consideration, adhered to the _1633_ reading. Chambers has
adopted that of the later editions, taking the line to mean that a man
builds ships in order to seek new lands and to deal or trade with all
lands. But ships cannot trade with inland countries. The form 'withal'
is the regular one for 'with' when it follows the noun it governs.
'We build ships not to let them lie in harbours but to seek new lands
with, and to trade with. ' The MS. evidence is not of much assistance,
because it is not clear in all cases what 'w^{th} all' stands for. The
words were sometimes separated even when the simple preposition
was intended. 'People, such as I have dealt with all in their
marchaundyse. ' Berners' _Froissart_, I. cclxvii. 395 (O. E. D. ). But
_D_, _H49_, _Lec_ read 'w^{th} All', supporting Chambers.
For the sentiment compare:
A stately builded ship well rig'd and tall
The Ocean maketh more majesticall:
Why vowest thou to live in Sestos here,
Who on Loves seas more glorious would appeare.
Marlowe, _Hero and Leander_: _First Sestiad_ 219-222.
For 'deale withall' compare:
For ye have much adoe to deale withal.
Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, VI. i. 10.
PAGE =37=. THE DREAME.
ll. 1-10. _Deare love, for nothing lesse then thee
Would I have broke this happy dreame,
It was a theame
For reason, much too strong for phantasie,
Therefore thou wak'dst me wisely; yet
My Dreame thou brok'st not, but continued'st it,
Thou art so truth, that thoughts of thee suffice,
To make dreames truths; and fables histories;
Enter these armes, &c. _
I have left the punctuation of the first stanza unaltered. The sense
is clear and any modernization alters the rhetoric. Chambers places a
semicolon after 'dreame' and a full stop after 'phantasie'. The
last is certainly wrong, for the statement 'It was a theme', &c. is
connected not with what precedes, but with what follows, 'Therefore
thou waked'st me wisely. ' In like manner Chambers's full stop
after 'but continued'st it' breaks the close connexion with the two
following lines, which are really an adverbial clause of explanation
or reason. 'My dream thou brokest not, but continued'st it,' for 'Thou
art so truth', &c. A full stop might more justifiably be placed after
'histories', but the semicolon is more in Donne's manner.
l. 7. _Thou art so truth. _ The evidence of the MSS. shows that both
'truth' and 'true' were current versions and explains the alteration
of _1635-69_. But 'truth' is both the more difficult reading and
the more subtle expression of Donne's thought; 'true' is the obvious
emendation of less metaphysical copyists and editors. Donne's 'Love'
is not true as opposed to false only; she is 'truth' as opposed
to dreams or phantasms or aught that partakes of unreality. She is
essentially truth as God is: 'Respondeo dicendum quod . . . veritas
invenitur in intellectu, secundum quod apprehendit rem ut est; et
in re, secundum quod habet esse conformabile intellectui. Hoc autem
maxime invenitur in Deo. Nam esse eius non solum est conforme suo
intelligere; et suum intelligere est mensura et causa omnis alterius
esse, et omnis alterius intellectus; et ipse est suum esse et
intelligere. Unde sequitur quod non solum in ipso sit veritas, sed
quod ipse sit ipsa summa et prima veritas. _Summa_ I. vi. 5.
To deify the object of your love was a common topic of love-poetry;
Donne does so with all the subtleties of scholastic theology at his
finger-ends. In this single poem he attributes to the lady addressed
two attributes of Deity, (1) the identity of being and essence, (2)
the power of reading the thoughts directly.
The Dutch poet keeps this point:
de Waerheyt is so ghy, en
Ghy zijt de Waerheyt so.
ll. 11-12. _As lightning, or a Tapers light
Thine eyes, and not thy noise wak'd mee. _
'A sodain light brought into a room doth awaken some men; but yet a
noise does it better. ' _Sermons_ 50. 38. 344.
'A candle wakes some men as well as a noise. ' _Sermons_ 80. 61. 617.
ll. 15-16. _But when I saw thou sawest my heart,
And knew'st my thoughts, beyond an Angels art. _
Modern editors, by removing the comma after 'thoughts', have altered
the sense of these lines. It is not that she could read his thoughts
better than an angel, but that she could read them at all, a power
which is not granted to Angels.
St. Thomas (_Summa Theol. _ Quaest. lvii. Art. 4) discusses 'Utrum
angeli cognoscant cogitationes cordium', and concludes, 'Cognoscunt
Angeli cordium cogitationes in suis effectibus: ut autem in se ipsis
sunt, Deo tantum sunt naturaliter cognitae. ' Angels may read our
thoughts by subtler signs than our words and acts, or even those
changes of countenance and pulsation which we note in each other,
'quanto subtilius huiusmodi immutationes occultas corporales
perpendunt. ' But to know them as they are in the intellect and will
belongs only to God, to whom only the freedom of the human will is
subject, and a man's thoughts are subject to his will. 'Manifestum
est autem, quod ex sola voluntate dependet, quod aliquis actu aliqua
consideret; quia cum aliquis habet habitum scientiae, vel species
intelligibiles in eo existentes, utitur eis cum vult. Et ideo dicit
Apostolus I Corinth. secundo: quod _quae sunt hominis, nemo novit nisi
spiritus hominis qui in ipso est_. '
Donne recurs to this theme very frequently: 'Let the Schoole dispute
infinitely (for he that will not content himself with means of
salvation till all Schoole points be reconciled, will come too late);
let Scotus and his Heard think, That Angels, and separate souls have a
naturall power to understand thoughts . . . And let Aquinas present his
arguments to the contrary, That those spirits have no naturall power
to know thoughts; we seek no farther, but that Jesus Christ himself
thought it argument enough to convince the Scribes and Pharisees,
and prove himself God, by knowing their thoughts. _Eadem Maiestate
et potentia_ sayes _S. Hierome_, Since you see I proceed as God, in
knowing your thoughts, why beleeve you not that I may forgive his sins
as God too? ' _Sermons_ 80. 11. 111; and compare also _Sermons_ 80. 9.
92.
This point is also preserved in the Dutch version:
Maer als ick u sagh sien wat om mijn hertje lagh
En weten wat ick docht (dat Engel noyt en sagh).
M. Legouis in a recent French version has left it ambiguous:
Mais quand j'ai vu que tu voyais mon coeur
Et savais mes pensées au dela du savoir d'un ange.
The MS. reading, 14 'but an Angel', heightens the antithesis.
ll. 27-8. _Perchance as torches which must ready bee
Men light and put out. _
'If it' (i. e. a torch) 'have _never_ been _lighted_, it does not
easily take light, but it must be _bruised_ and _beaten_ first; if
it have been lighted and put out, though it cannot take fire _of it
self_, yet it does easily conceive fire, if it be presented within any
convenient distance. ' _Sermons_ 50. 36. 332.
PAGE =38=. A VALEDICTION: OF WEEPING.
ll. 1-9. I have changed the comma at l. 6 to a semicolon, as the first
image, that of the coins, closes here. Chambers places a full stop
at l. 4 'worth', and apparently connects the next two lines with what
follows--wrongly, I think. Finishing the figure of the coins, coined,
stamped, and given their value by her, Donne passes on to a couple of
new images. 'The tears are fruits of much grief; but they are symbols
of more to come. For, as your image perishes in each tear that falls,
so shall we perish, be nothing, when between us rolls the "salt,
estranging sea". '
It is, I suppose, by an inadvertence that Chambers has left 'divers'
unchanged to 'diverse'. I cannot think there is any reference to 'a
diver in the pearly seas'. Grolier and the Dutch poet divide as here:
Laet voor uw aengesicht mijn trouwe tranen vallen,
Want van dat aengensicht ontfangen sy uw' munt,
En rijsen tot de waerd dies' uwe stempel gunt
Bevrucht van uw' gedaent: vrucht van veel' ongevallen,
Maer teekenen van meer, daer ghy valt met den traen,
Die van u swanger was, en beyde wy ontdaen
Verdwijnen, soo wy op verscheiden oever staen.
PAGE =39=. LOVES ALCHYMIE.
l. 7. _th'Elixar_: i. e. 'the Elixir Vitae', which heals all disease
and indefinitely prolongs life. It is sometimes identified with the
philosopher's stone, which transmutes metals to gold. In speaking of
quintessences (see note, II. p. 30) Paracelsus declares that there are
certain quintessences superior to those of gold, marchasite, precious
stones, &c. , 'of more importance than that they should be called a
quintessence. It should be rather spoken of as a certain secret and
mystery . . . Among these arcana we here put forward four. Of these
arcana the first is the mercury of life, the second is the primal
matter, the third is the Philosopher's Stone, and the fourth the
tincture. But although these arcana are rather angelical than human to
speak of we shall not shrink from them. ' From the description he gives
they all seem to operate more or less alike, purging metals and other
bodies from disease.
ll. 7-10. _And as no chymique yet, &c. _ 'My Lord Chancellor gave me
so noble and so ready a dispatch, accompanied with so fatherly advice
that I am now, like an alchemist, delighted with discoveries by the
way, though I attain not mine end. ' To . . . Sir H. G. , Gosse's _Life,
&c. _, ii. 49.
ll. 23-4.
_at their best
Sweetnesse and wit, they'are but Mummy, possest. _
The punctuation of these lines in _1633-54_ is ambiguous, and Chambers
has altered it wrongly to
Sweetness and wit they are, but Mummy possest.
The MSS. generally support the punctuation which I have adopted, which
is that of the Grolier Club edition.
PAGE =40=. THE FLEA.
I have restored this poem to the place it occupied in _1633_. In
_1635_ it was placed first of all the _Songs and Sonets_. A strange
choice to our mind, but apparently the poem was greatly admired as
a masterpiece of wit. It is the first of the pieces translated by
Huyghens:
De Vloy.
Slaet acht op deze Vloy, en leert wat overleggen,
Hoe slechten ding het is dat ghy my kont ontzeggen, &c. ,
and was selected for special commendation by some of his
correspondents. Coleridge comments upon it in verse:
Be proud as Spaniards. Leap for pride, ye Fleas!
In natures _minim_ realm ye're now grandees.
Skip-jacks no more, nor civiller skip-johns;
Thrice-honored Fleas! I greet you all as _Dons_.
In Phoebus' archives registered are ye,
And this your patent of nobility.
It will be noticed that there are two versions of Donne's poem.
PAGE =41=. THE CURSE.
l. 3. _His only, and only his purse. _ This, the reading of all the
editions except the last, and of the MSS. , is obviously right. What
is to dispose 'some dull heart to love' is his _only_ purse and _his_
alone, no one's but his purse. Chambers adopts the _1669_ conjecture,
'Him only for his purse,' but in that case there is no subject to 'may
dispose', or if 'some dull heart' be subject then 'itself' must be
supplied--a harsh construction. 'Dispose' is not used intransitively
in this sense.
l. 27. _Mynes. _ I have adopted the plural from the MSS. It brings it
into line with the other objects mentioned.
PAGE =43=. THE MESSAGE.
l. 11. _But if it be taught by thine. _ It seems incredible that Donne
should have written 'which if it' &c. immediately after the 'which'
of the preceding line. I had thought that the _1633_ printer had
accidentally repeated from the line above, but the evidence of the
MSS. points to the mistake (if it is a mistake) being older than that.
'Which' was in the MS. used by the printer. If 'But' is not Donne's
own reading or emendation it ought to be, and I am loath to injure a
charming poem by pedantic adherence to authority in so small a point.
_De minimis non curat lex_; but art cares very much indeed. _JC_ and
_P_ read 'Yet since it hath learn'd by thine'.
ll. 14 f. _And crosse both
Word and oath, &c. _
The 'crosse' of all the MSS. is pretty certainly what Donne wrote. An
editor would change to 'break' hardly the other way. To 'crosse' is,
of course, to 'cancel'. Compare Jonson's _Poetaster_, Act II, Scene i:
Faith, sir, your mercer's Book
Will tell you with more patience, then I can
(For I am crost, and so's not that I thinke. )
and
Examine well thy beauty with my truth,
And cross my cares, ere greater sums arise.
Daniel, _Delia_, i.
PAGE =44=. A NOCTURNALL, &c.
l. 12. _For I am every dead thing. _ I have not thought it right to
alter the _1633_ 'every' to the 'very' of _1635-69_. 'Every' has some
MS. support, and it is the more difficult reading, though of course 'a
very' might easily enough be misread. But I rather think that 'every'
expresses what Donne means. He is 'every dead thing' because he is the
quintessence of all negations--'absence, darkness, death: things which
are not', and more than that, 'the first nothing. '
ll. 14-18. _For his art did expresse . . . things which are not. _ This
is a difficult stanza in a difficult poem. I have after considerable
hesitation adopted the punctuation of _1719_, which is followed by all
the modern editors. This makes 'dull privations' and 'lean emptinesse'
expansions of 'nothingnesse'. This is the simpler construction. I am
not sure, however, that the punctuation of the earlier editions and of
the MSS. may not be correct. In that case 'From dull privations' goes
with 'he ruined me'. Milton speaks of 'ruining from Heaven'. 'From me,
who was nothing', says Donne, 'Love extracted the very quintessence
of nothingness--made me more nothing than I already was. My state was
already one of "dull privation" and "lean emptiness", and Love reduced
it still further, making me once more the non-entity I was before
I was created. ' Only Donne could be guilty of such refined and
extravagant subtlety. But probably this is to refine too much. There
is no example of 'ruining' as an active verb used in this fashion.
A feature of the MS. collection from which this poem was probably
printed is the omission of stops at the end of the line. In the next
verse Donne pushes the annihilation further. Made nothing by Love,
by the death of her he loves he is made the elixir (i. e. the
quintessence) not now of ordinary nothing, but of 'the first nothing',
the nothing which preceded God's first act of creation. The poem turns
upon the thought of degrees in nothingness.
For 'elixir' as identical with 'quintessence' see Oxf. Eng. Dict. ,
_Elixir_, † iii. b, and the quotation there, 'A distill'd
quintessence, a pure elixar of mischief, pestilent alike to all. '
Milton, _Church Govt. _
Of the 'first Nothing' Donne speaks in the _Essays in Divinity_
(Jessop, 1855), pp. 80-1, but in a rather different strain: 'To speak
truth freely there was no such Nothing as this' (the nothing which a
man might wish to be) 'before the beginning: for he that hath refined
all the old definitions hath put this ingredient _Creabile_ (which
cannot be absolutely nothing) into his definition of creation; and
that Nothing which was, we cannot desire; for man's will is not larger
than God's power: and since Nothing was not a pre-existent matter, nor
mother of this all, but only a limitation when any thing began to be;
how impossible it is to return to that first point of time, since God
(if it imply contradiction) cannot reduce yesterday? Of this we
will say no more; for this Nothing being no creature; is more
incomprehensible than all the rest. '
ll. 31-2. The Grolier Club edition reads:
I should prefer
If I were any beast; some end, some means;
which is to me unintelligible. 'If I were a beast, I should prefer
some end, some means' refers to the Aristotelian and Schools doctrine
of the soul. The soul of man is rational and self-conscious; of beasts
perceptive and moving, therefore able to select ends and means; the
vegetative soul of plants selects what it can feed on and rejects what
it cannot, and so far detests and loves. Even stones, which have no
souls, attract and repel. But even of stones Donne says: 'We are not
sure that stones have not life; stones may have life; neither (to
speak humanely) is it unreasonably thought by them, that thought the
whole world to be inanimated by one soule, and to be one intire living
creature; and in that respect does S. Augustine prefer a fly before
the Sun, because a fly hath life, and the Sun hath not. ' _Sermons_ 80.
7. 69-70.
l. 35. _If I an ordinary nothing were. _ 'A shadow is nothing, yet, if
the rising or falling sun shines out and there be no shadow, I will
pronounce there is no body in that place neither. Ceremonies are
nothing; but where there are no ceremonies, order, and obedience, and
at last (and quickly) religion itself will vanish. ' _Sermons_ (quoted
in _Selections from Donne_, 1840).
l. 41. _Enjoy your summer all_; This is Grosart's punctuation. The old
editions have a comma. Chambers, obviously quite wrongly, retains the
comma, and closes the sentence in the next line. The clause 'Since she
enjoys her long night's festival' explains 43 'Let me prepare towards
her', &c. , _not_ 41 'Enjoy your summer all'.
PAGE =47=. THE APPARITION.
ll. 1-13. The Grolier Club editor places a full stop, Chambers a
colon, after 'shrinke', for the comma of the old editions. Chambers's
division is better than the first, which interrupts the steady run of
the thought to the climax,
A verier ghost than I.
The original punctuation preserves the rapid, crowded march of the
clauses.
l. 10. This line throws light on the character of the _1669_ text.
The correct reading of _1633_ was spoiled in _1635_ by accidentally
dropping 'will', and this error continued through _1639-54_. The 1669
editor, detecting the metrical fault, made the line decasyllabic by
interpolating 'a' and 'even'.
PAGE =48=. THE BROKEN HEART.
l. 8. _A flaske of powder burne a day. _ The 'flash' of later editions
is probably a conjectural emendation, for 'flaske' (_1633_ and many
MSS. ) makes good sense; and the metaphor of a burning flask of powder
seems to suit exactly the later lines which describe what happened to
the heart which love inflamed
but Love, alas,
At one first blow did shiver it as glasse.
Shakespeare uses the same simile in a different connexion:
Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,
Mis-shapen in the conduct of them both:
Like powder in a skilless soldiers flaske,
Is set a fire by thine own ignorance,
And thou dismembred with thine owne defence.
_Romeo and Juliet_, III. iii. 130.
l. 14. _and never chawes_: 'chaw' is the form Donne generally uses:
'Implicite beleevers, ignorant beleevers, the adversary may swallow;
but the understanding beleever, he must chaw, and pick bones, before
he come to assimilate him, and make him like himself. ' _Sermons_ 80.
18. 178.
PAGE =49=. A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING MOURNING.
This poem is quoted by Walton after his account of the vision which
Donne had of his wife in France, in 1612: 'I forbear the readers
farther trouble as to the relation and what concerns it, and will
conclude mine with commending to his view a copy of verses given by
Mr. Donne to his wife at the time that he then parted from her: and
I beg leave to tell, that I have heard some critics, learned both in
languages and poetry, say, that none of the Greek or Latin poets did
ever equal them. ' The critics probably included Wotton,--perhaps also
Hales, whose criticism of Shakespeare shows the same readiness to find
our own poets as good as the Ancients.
The song, 'Sweetest love I do not go,' was probably written at the
same time. It is almost identical in tone. They are certainly the
tenderest of Donne's love poems, perhaps the only ones to which the
epithet 'tender' can be applied. The _Valediction: of weeping_ is more
passionate.
An early translation of this poem into Greek verse is found in a
volume in the Bodleian Library.
ll. 9-12. _Moving of th'earth, &c. _ 'The "trepidation" was the
precession of the equinoxes, supposed, according to the Ptolemaic
astronomy, to be caused by the movements of the Ninth or Crystalline
Sphere. ' Chambers.
First you see fixt in this huge mirrour blew,
Of trembling lights, a number numberlesse:
Fixt they are nam'd, but with a name untrue,
For they all moove and in a Daunce expresse
That great long yeare, that doth contain no lesse
Then threescore hundreds of those yeares in all,
Which the sunne makes with his course naturall.
What if to you those sparks disordered seem
As if by chaunce they had beene scattered there?
The gods a solemne measure doe it deeme,
And see a iust proportion every where,
And know the points whence first their movings were;
To which first points when all returne againe,
The axel-tree of Heav'n shall breake in twain.
Sir John Davies, _Orchestra_, 35-6.
l. 16. _Those things which elemented it. _ Chambers follows _1669_ and
reads 'The thing'--wrongly, I think. 'Elemented' is just 'composed',
and the things are enumerated later, 20. 'eyes, lips, hands. ' Compare:
But neither chance nor compliment
Did element our love.
Katharine Phillips (Orinda), _To Mrs. M. A. at parting_.
This and the fellow poem _Upon Absence_ may be compared with Donne's
poems on the same theme. See Saintsbury's _Caroline Poets_, i, pp.
548, 550.
l. 20. _and hands_: 'and' has the support of _all_ the MSS. The want
of it is no great loss, for though without it the line moves a little
irregularly, 'and hands' is not a pleasant concatenation.
ll. 25-36. _If they be two, &c. _ Donne's famous simile has a close
parallel in Omar Khayyam. Whether Donne's 'hydroptic immoderate thirst
of humane learning and languages' extended to Persian I do not know.
Captain Harris has supplied me with translations and reference:
In these twin compasses, O Love, you see
One body with two heads, like you and me,
Which wander round one centre, circle wise,
But at the last in one same point agree.
Whinfield's edition of _Omar Khayyam_ (Kegan Paul,
Trübner, 1901, Oriental Series, p. 216).
