Whatever appears in the air, movable or immovable, the same appears
also in the speculum or crystal as a wave.
also in the speculum or crystal as a wave.
John Donne
C.
L.
, whose life was dissolute and
poetry indecent, perhaps the most pleasing relic is the following poem
addressed to his father. It is found in _O'F_ and has been printed by
Mr. Warwick Bond:
A LETTER.
No want of duty did my mind possesse,
I through a dearth of words could not expresse
That w^{ch} I feare I doe too soone pursue
W^{ch} is to pay my duty due to you.
For, through the weaknesse of my witt, this way
I shall diminish what I hope to pay.
And this consider, T'was the sonne of May
And not Apollo that did rule the day.
Had it bin hee then somthing would have rose;
In gratefull verse or else in thankfull prose
I would have told you (father) by my hand
That I yo^r sonne am prouder of yo^r band
Then others of theyr freedome, And to pay
Thinke it good service to kneele downe and pray.
Yo^r obedient sonne
JO. DONNE.
PAGES =5, 6=. The three poems by Jonson were printed in the sheets
hastily added by the younger Donne in 1650 to the edition of Donne's
poems prepared for the press in 1649. See _Text and Canon, &c. _
They were taken from Jonson's _Epigrams_ (1616), where they are Nos.
xxiii. , xciv. , and xcvi. Of Donne as a poet Jonson uttered three
memorable criticisms in his _Conversations with Drummond_ (ed. Laing,
Shakespeare Society, 1842):
'He esteemeth John Done the first poet in the world for some things. '
'That Done for not keeping of accent deserved hanging. '
'That Done himself, for not being understood, would perish. '
SONGS AND SONETS.
Of all Donne's poems these are the most difficult to date with any
definiteness. Jonson, Drummond notes, 'affirmeth Done to have written
all his best pieces ere he was twenty-five years old,' that would be
before 1598, the year in which Donne became secretary to Sir Thomas
Egerton. This harmonizes fairly well with such indications of date as
are discoverable in the _Elegies_, poems similar in theme and tone
to the _Songs and Sonets_. Mr. Chambers pushes the more daring and
cynical of these poems in both these groups further back. He says,
'All Donne's Love-poems . . . seem to me to fall into two divisions.
There is one, marked by cynicism, ethical laxity and a somewhat
deliberate profession of inconstancy. This I believe to be his
earliest style, and ascribe the poems marked by it to the period
before 1596. About that date he became acquainted with Anne More, whom
he evidently loved devotedly and sincerely ever after. And therefore
from 1596 onwards I place the second division, with its emphasis of
the spiritual, and deep insight into the real things of love. ' This is
a little too early. Anne More was only twelve years old in 1596, and
it is unlikely that she and Donne were known to each other before
1598. Their affection probably ripened later. It almost seems from
Donne's letters to his friends as though about 1599 he was proffering
at least courtly adoration to some other lady.
Moreover, it is to conceive somewhat inadequately of Donne's complex
nature to make too sharp a temporal division between his gayer, more
cynical effusions and his graver, even religious pieces. The truth
about Donne is well stated by Professor Norton: 'Donne's "better
angel" and his "worser spirit" seem to have kept up a continual
contest, now the one, now the other, gaining the mastery in his
Poor soul, the centre of his sinful earth. '
The 'evaporations' which he allowed his wit from time to time till he
took orders showed always a certain 'ethical laxity' and 'cynicism' of
outlook on men and women. The _Elegie XIV_ (if it be Donne's, and
Mr. Chambers does not question its authenticity), the lines _Upon Mr.
Thomas Coryats Crudities_, the two frankly pagan _Epithalamia_ on the
Princess Elizabeth and the Countess of Somerset, to say nothing of
_Ignatius his Conclave_, were all written long after his marriage and
when he was already the author of moral epistles and 'divine poems'.
Even Professor Norton's statement exaggerates the 'contest' a little.
These things were evaporations of wit, and even a serious man in
the seventeenth century allowed to his wit satyric gambols which
disconcert our staider and more fastidious taste. I am quite at one
with Mr. Chambers in accepting his marriage as a turning-point in the
history of Donne's life and mind. But it would be rash to affirm that
_none_ of his wittier lyrics were written after this date.
Donne's 'songs and sonets' seem to me to fall into three rather than
two classes, though there is a good deal of overlapping. Donne's wit
is always touched with passion; his passion is always witty. In the
first class I would place those which are frankly 'evaporations'
of more or less cynical wit, the poems in which he parades his own
inconstancy or enlarges on the weaknesses of women, poems such as 'Goe
and catche', _Womans constancy_, _The Indifferent_, _Loves Vsury_,
_The Legacie_, _Communitie_, _Confined Love_, _Loves Alchymie_, _The
Flea_, _The Message_, _Witchcraft by a picture_, _The Apparition_,
_Loves Deitie_, _Loves diet_, _The Will_, _A Jeat Ring sent_,
_Negative love_, _Farewell to love_. In another group the wit in
Donne, whether gaily or passionately cynical, is subordinate to the
lover, pure and simple, singing, at times with amazing simplicity and
intensity of feeling, the joys of love and the sorrow of parting. Such
are _The good-morrow_, _The Sunne Rising_, _The Canonization_, _Lovers
infiniteness_, 'Sweetest love, I do not goe,' _A Feaver_, _Aire and
Angells_ (touched with cynical humour at the close), _Breake of day_,
_The Anniversarie_, _A Valediction: of the booke_, _Loves growth_,
_The Dreame_, _A Valediction: of weeping_, _The Baite_, _A
Valediction: forbidding mourning_, _The Extasie_, _The Prohibition_,
_The Expiration_, _Lecture upon the Shadow_. It would, of course, be
rash to say that all such poems were addressed to his wife. Some, like
_The Baite_, are purely literary in origin; others present the obverse
side of the passion portrayed in the first group, its happier moments.
But one must believe that those in which ardour is combined with
elevation and delicacy of feeling were addressed to Anne More before
and after their marriage.
In the third and smallest group, which includes, however, such fine
examples of his subtler moods as _The Funerall_, _The Blossome_, _The
Primrose_, Donne adopts the tone (as sincerely as was generally the
case) of the Petrarchian lover whose mistress's coldness has slain him
or provokes his passionate protestations. Some of these must, I think,
have been written after Donne's marriage. The titles one or two bear
connect them with Mrs. Herbert and the Countess of Bedford. The two
most enigmatical poems in the _Songs and Sonets_ are _Twicknam Garden_
and _A nocturnall upon S. Lucies day_. Yet the very names 'Twicknam
Garden' and 'S. Lucies day' suggest a reference to the Countess of
Bedford. It is possible that the last was written when Lady Bedford
was ill in December, 1612? 'My Lady Bedford last night about one of
the clock was suddenly, and has continued ever since, speechless,
and is past all hopes though yet alive,' writes the Earl of Dorset on
November 23, 1612. It is probable that on December 13 she was still in
a critical condition, supposing the illness to have been that common
complaint of an age of bad drains, namely typhoid fever, and Donne
may have written in anticipation of her death. But the suggestion is
hazardous. The third verse speaks a stronger language than that of
Petrarchian adoration. Still it is difficult for us to estimate aright
all that was allowed to a 'servant' under the accepted convention.
It is noteworthy that the poem is not included in any known MS.
collection made before 1630. The Countess died in 1627.
PAGE =7=. THE GOOD-MORROW.
The MSS. point to two distinct recensions of this poem. The one which
is given in the group of MSS. _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and in _1633_, reads,
3. countrey pleasures childishly 4. snorted 14. one world 17. better.
The other, which is the most common in the MSS. , reads, 3. childish
pleasures seelily 4. slumbred 14. our world 17. fitter. The edition of
1635 shows a contamination of the two due to the fact that the printer
'set up' from _1633_, and he or the editor corrected from a MS.
collection, probably _A18_, _N_, _TC_. In _TCD_ the second recension
is given in the collection of Donne's poems in the first part of the
MS. ; in the second part, a miscellaneous collection of poems, the poem
is given again, but according to the other version. It does not seem
to me possible to decide absolutely the relative authority of the two
versions, but to my mind that of 1633 and _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ seems the
more racy and characteristic. It probably represents the first
version of the poem, whether Donne or another be responsible for the
alterations. The only point of importance to be decided is whether
'better' or 'fitter' expresses more exactly what the poet meant to
say. The 1635 editor preferred 'fitter', thinking probably that
the idea of exact correspondence is emphasized, 'where find two
hemispheres that fit one another more exactly? ' But this is not,
I think, what Donne meant. The mutual fittingness of the lovers is
implied already in the idea that each is a whole world to the other.
Gazing in each other's eyes each beholds a hemisphere of this world.
The whole cannot, of course, be reflected. And where could either find
a _better_ hemisphere, one in which there is as here neither 'sharpe
North' nor 'declining West', neither coldness nor alteration.
l. 13. _Let Maps to other. _ The edition may have dropped the 's',
which occurs in most of the MSS. , but the plural without 's' is common
even till a later period: 'These, as his other, were naughty things. '
Bunyan, _The Life and Death of Mr. Badman_, p. 106 (Cambridge English
Classics). 'And other of such vinegar aspect That they'll not show
their teeth in way of smile. ' Shakespeare, _Merchant of Venice_, I. i.
54.
ll. 20-1. _If our two loves be one, &c. _ If our two loves are _one_,
dissolution is impossible; and the same is true if, though _two_,
they are always alike. What is simple--as God or the soul--cannot
be dissolved; nor compounds, e. g. the Heavenly bodies, between whose
elements there is no contrariety. 'Impossibile autem est quod forma
separetur a se ipsa. Unde impossibile est, quod forma subsistens
desinat esse. Dato etiam, quod anima esset ex materia et
forma composita, ut quidam dicunt, adhuc oporteret ponere eam
incorruptibilem. Non enim invenitur corruptio nisi ubi invenitur
contrarietas; generationes enim et corruptiones ex contrariis et in
contraria sunt' &c. , Aquinas, _Summa_ I. Quaest. lxxv, Art. 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=.
poetry indecent, perhaps the most pleasing relic is the following poem
addressed to his father. It is found in _O'F_ and has been printed by
Mr. Warwick Bond:
A LETTER.
No want of duty did my mind possesse,
I through a dearth of words could not expresse
That w^{ch} I feare I doe too soone pursue
W^{ch} is to pay my duty due to you.
For, through the weaknesse of my witt, this way
I shall diminish what I hope to pay.
And this consider, T'was the sonne of May
And not Apollo that did rule the day.
Had it bin hee then somthing would have rose;
In gratefull verse or else in thankfull prose
I would have told you (father) by my hand
That I yo^r sonne am prouder of yo^r band
Then others of theyr freedome, And to pay
Thinke it good service to kneele downe and pray.
Yo^r obedient sonne
JO. DONNE.
PAGES =5, 6=. The three poems by Jonson were printed in the sheets
hastily added by the younger Donne in 1650 to the edition of Donne's
poems prepared for the press in 1649. See _Text and Canon, &c. _
They were taken from Jonson's _Epigrams_ (1616), where they are Nos.
xxiii. , xciv. , and xcvi. Of Donne as a poet Jonson uttered three
memorable criticisms in his _Conversations with Drummond_ (ed. Laing,
Shakespeare Society, 1842):
'He esteemeth John Done the first poet in the world for some things. '
'That Done for not keeping of accent deserved hanging. '
'That Done himself, for not being understood, would perish. '
SONGS AND SONETS.
Of all Donne's poems these are the most difficult to date with any
definiteness. Jonson, Drummond notes, 'affirmeth Done to have written
all his best pieces ere he was twenty-five years old,' that would be
before 1598, the year in which Donne became secretary to Sir Thomas
Egerton. This harmonizes fairly well with such indications of date as
are discoverable in the _Elegies_, poems similar in theme and tone
to the _Songs and Sonets_. Mr. Chambers pushes the more daring and
cynical of these poems in both these groups further back. He says,
'All Donne's Love-poems . . . seem to me to fall into two divisions.
There is one, marked by cynicism, ethical laxity and a somewhat
deliberate profession of inconstancy. This I believe to be his
earliest style, and ascribe the poems marked by it to the period
before 1596. About that date he became acquainted with Anne More, whom
he evidently loved devotedly and sincerely ever after. And therefore
from 1596 onwards I place the second division, with its emphasis of
the spiritual, and deep insight into the real things of love. ' This is
a little too early. Anne More was only twelve years old in 1596, and
it is unlikely that she and Donne were known to each other before
1598. Their affection probably ripened later. It almost seems from
Donne's letters to his friends as though about 1599 he was proffering
at least courtly adoration to some other lady.
Moreover, it is to conceive somewhat inadequately of Donne's complex
nature to make too sharp a temporal division between his gayer, more
cynical effusions and his graver, even religious pieces. The truth
about Donne is well stated by Professor Norton: 'Donne's "better
angel" and his "worser spirit" seem to have kept up a continual
contest, now the one, now the other, gaining the mastery in his
Poor soul, the centre of his sinful earth. '
The 'evaporations' which he allowed his wit from time to time till he
took orders showed always a certain 'ethical laxity' and 'cynicism' of
outlook on men and women. The _Elegie XIV_ (if it be Donne's, and
Mr. Chambers does not question its authenticity), the lines _Upon Mr.
Thomas Coryats Crudities_, the two frankly pagan _Epithalamia_ on the
Princess Elizabeth and the Countess of Somerset, to say nothing of
_Ignatius his Conclave_, were all written long after his marriage and
when he was already the author of moral epistles and 'divine poems'.
Even Professor Norton's statement exaggerates the 'contest' a little.
These things were evaporations of wit, and even a serious man in
the seventeenth century allowed to his wit satyric gambols which
disconcert our staider and more fastidious taste. I am quite at one
with Mr. Chambers in accepting his marriage as a turning-point in the
history of Donne's life and mind. But it would be rash to affirm that
_none_ of his wittier lyrics were written after this date.
Donne's 'songs and sonets' seem to me to fall into three rather than
two classes, though there is a good deal of overlapping. Donne's wit
is always touched with passion; his passion is always witty. In the
first class I would place those which are frankly 'evaporations'
of more or less cynical wit, the poems in which he parades his own
inconstancy or enlarges on the weaknesses of women, poems such as 'Goe
and catche', _Womans constancy_, _The Indifferent_, _Loves Vsury_,
_The Legacie_, _Communitie_, _Confined Love_, _Loves Alchymie_, _The
Flea_, _The Message_, _Witchcraft by a picture_, _The Apparition_,
_Loves Deitie_, _Loves diet_, _The Will_, _A Jeat Ring sent_,
_Negative love_, _Farewell to love_. In another group the wit in
Donne, whether gaily or passionately cynical, is subordinate to the
lover, pure and simple, singing, at times with amazing simplicity and
intensity of feeling, the joys of love and the sorrow of parting. Such
are _The good-morrow_, _The Sunne Rising_, _The Canonization_, _Lovers
infiniteness_, 'Sweetest love, I do not goe,' _A Feaver_, _Aire and
Angells_ (touched with cynical humour at the close), _Breake of day_,
_The Anniversarie_, _A Valediction: of the booke_, _Loves growth_,
_The Dreame_, _A Valediction: of weeping_, _The Baite_, _A
Valediction: forbidding mourning_, _The Extasie_, _The Prohibition_,
_The Expiration_, _Lecture upon the Shadow_. It would, of course, be
rash to say that all such poems were addressed to his wife. Some, like
_The Baite_, are purely literary in origin; others present the obverse
side of the passion portrayed in the first group, its happier moments.
But one must believe that those in which ardour is combined with
elevation and delicacy of feeling were addressed to Anne More before
and after their marriage.
In the third and smallest group, which includes, however, such fine
examples of his subtler moods as _The Funerall_, _The Blossome_, _The
Primrose_, Donne adopts the tone (as sincerely as was generally the
case) of the Petrarchian lover whose mistress's coldness has slain him
or provokes his passionate protestations. Some of these must, I think,
have been written after Donne's marriage. The titles one or two bear
connect them with Mrs. Herbert and the Countess of Bedford. The two
most enigmatical poems in the _Songs and Sonets_ are _Twicknam Garden_
and _A nocturnall upon S. Lucies day_. Yet the very names 'Twicknam
Garden' and 'S. Lucies day' suggest a reference to the Countess of
Bedford. It is possible that the last was written when Lady Bedford
was ill in December, 1612? 'My Lady Bedford last night about one of
the clock was suddenly, and has continued ever since, speechless,
and is past all hopes though yet alive,' writes the Earl of Dorset on
November 23, 1612. It is probable that on December 13 she was still in
a critical condition, supposing the illness to have been that common
complaint of an age of bad drains, namely typhoid fever, and Donne
may have written in anticipation of her death. But the suggestion is
hazardous. The third verse speaks a stronger language than that of
Petrarchian adoration. Still it is difficult for us to estimate aright
all that was allowed to a 'servant' under the accepted convention.
It is noteworthy that the poem is not included in any known MS.
collection made before 1630. The Countess died in 1627.
PAGE =7=. THE GOOD-MORROW.
The MSS. point to two distinct recensions of this poem. The one which
is given in the group of MSS. _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and in _1633_, reads,
3. countrey pleasures childishly 4. snorted 14. one world 17. better.
The other, which is the most common in the MSS. , reads, 3. childish
pleasures seelily 4. slumbred 14. our world 17. fitter. The edition of
1635 shows a contamination of the two due to the fact that the printer
'set up' from _1633_, and he or the editor corrected from a MS.
collection, probably _A18_, _N_, _TC_. In _TCD_ the second recension
is given in the collection of Donne's poems in the first part of the
MS. ; in the second part, a miscellaneous collection of poems, the poem
is given again, but according to the other version. It does not seem
to me possible to decide absolutely the relative authority of the two
versions, but to my mind that of 1633 and _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ seems the
more racy and characteristic. It probably represents the first
version of the poem, whether Donne or another be responsible for the
alterations. The only point of importance to be decided is whether
'better' or 'fitter' expresses more exactly what the poet meant to
say. The 1635 editor preferred 'fitter', thinking probably that
the idea of exact correspondence is emphasized, 'where find two
hemispheres that fit one another more exactly? ' But this is not,
I think, what Donne meant. The mutual fittingness of the lovers is
implied already in the idea that each is a whole world to the other.
Gazing in each other's eyes each beholds a hemisphere of this world.
The whole cannot, of course, be reflected. And where could either find
a _better_ hemisphere, one in which there is as here neither 'sharpe
North' nor 'declining West', neither coldness nor alteration.
l. 13. _Let Maps to other. _ The edition may have dropped the 's',
which occurs in most of the MSS. , but the plural without 's' is common
even till a later period: 'These, as his other, were naughty things. '
Bunyan, _The Life and Death of Mr. Badman_, p. 106 (Cambridge English
Classics). 'And other of such vinegar aspect That they'll not show
their teeth in way of smile. ' Shakespeare, _Merchant of Venice_, I. i.
54.
ll. 20-1. _If our two loves be one, &c. _ If our two loves are _one_,
dissolution is impossible; and the same is true if, though _two_,
they are always alike. What is simple--as God or the soul--cannot
be dissolved; nor compounds, e. g. the Heavenly bodies, between whose
elements there is no contrariety. 'Impossibile autem est quod forma
separetur a se ipsa. Unde impossibile est, quod forma subsistens
desinat esse. Dato etiam, quod anima esset ex materia et
forma composita, ut quidam dicunt, adhuc oporteret ponere eam
incorruptibilem. Non enim invenitur corruptio nisi ubi invenitur
contrarietas; generationes enim et corruptiones ex contrariis et in
contraria sunt' &c. , Aquinas, _Summa_ I. Quaest. lxxv, Art. 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=.
