No More Learning

then England say 376
Is not thy sacred hunger of science 212

Kinde pitty chokes my spleene; brave scorn forbids 154
Kindly I envy thy songs perfection 210
_Klockius_ so deeply hath sworne, ne'r more to come 77

Language thou art too narrow, and too weake 284
Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this, 336
Let me powre forth 38
Like Esops fellow-slaves, O _Mercury_, 78
Like one who'in her third widdowhood doth professe 185
Little think'st thou, poore flower, 59
? Long since this taske of teares from you was due, 394
Looke to mee faith, and looke to my faith, God; 267
_Love_, any devill else but you, 34
*Love bred of Glances twixt amorous eyes 450
*Love if a god thou art, 448
? _Lucy_, you brightnesse of our Spheare, who are, 6

Mad paper stay, and grudge not here to burne 216
*Madam that flea that Crept between your brests 459
Man is a lumpe, where all beasts kneaded bee, 193
Man is the World, and death th'Ocean, 279
Man to Gods image; _Eve_, to mans was made, 201
Marke but this flea, and marke in this, 40
Marry, and love thy _Flavia_, for, shee 80
*Men write that love and reason disagree, 406
Moyst with one drop of thy blood, my dry soule 321
Muse not that by thy mind thy body is led: 207
My Fortune and my choice this custome break, 292
*My love doth fly w^{th} wings of feare 437
My name engrav'd herein, 25

*Nature amaz'd sawe man without mans ayde 443
Natures lay Ideot, I taught thee to love, 89
No Lover saith, I love, nor any other 69
No _Spring_, nor _Summer_ Beauty hath such grace, 92
*Not Kisse? By Jove I must, and make impression 456
Not that in colour it was like thy haire, 96
Nothing could make me sooner to confesse 251
? Now by one yeare, time and our frailtie have 392
Now thou hast lov'd me one whole day, 9
*Now y'have killd mee with yo^{r} scorne 450

*O eyes, what do you see? 438
*O frutefull garden, and yet never tilde, 434
O might those sighes and teares returne againe 323
O Thou which to search out the secret parts 211
*O what a blisse 441
Of that short Roll of friends writ in my heart 212
Oh do not die, for I shall hate 21
Oh, let mee not serve so, as those men serve 87
Oh my blacke Soule! now thou art summoned 323
Oh, to vex me, contraryes meet in one: 331
Oh to what height will love of greatnesse drive 172
Once, and but once found in thy company, 84
Our storme is past, and that storms tyrannous rage, 178
Out of a fired ship, which, by no way 75

_Parturiunt madido quae nixu praela, recepta_, 397
_Philo_, with twelve yeares study, hath beene griev'd 77
? Poets attend, the Elegie I sing 380
Pregnant again with th'old twins Hope, and Feare, 206

_Qui prius assuetus Serpentum fasce Tabellas_ 398
_Quod arte ausus es hic tua, Poeta_, 398
_Quot_, _dos haec_, Linguists perfetti, _Disticha_ fairont, 174

Reason is our Soules left hand, Faith her right 189

Salute the last and everlasting day, 321
Salvation to all that will is nigh; 319
See Sir, how as the Suns hot Masculine flame 317
Send home my long strayd eyes to mee, 43
Send me some token, that my hope may live, 72
*Shall I goe force an Elegie? abuse 410
Shee'is dead; And all which die 64
Show me deare Christ, thy spouse, so bright and clear. 330
Since Christ embrac'd the Crosse it selfe, dare I 331
*Since ev'ry Tree beginns to blossome now 433
Since I am comming to that Holy roome, 368
Since she must go, and I must mourn, come Night, 100
Since she whom I lov'd hath payd her last debt 330
Sir, more then kisses, letters mingle Soules; 180
Sir; though (I thanke God for it) I do hate 149
*Sleep, next Society and true friendship, 401
Sleep sleep old Sun, thou canst not have repast 333
So, so breake off this last lamenting kisse, 68
Some man unworthy to be possessor 36
Some that have deeper digg'd loves Myne then I, 39
Sorrow, who to this house scarce knew the way: 287
*Soules joy, now I am gone, 429
Spit in my face you Jewes, and pierce my side, 327
Stand still, and I will read to thee 71
*Stay, O sweet, and do not rise, 432
Sweetest love, I do not goe, 18

Take heed of loving mee, 67
Tamely, fraile body,'abstaine to day; to day 334
*Tell her if she to hired servants shew 416
*Tell me who can when a player dies 443
That I might make your Cabinet my tombe, 291
*That unripe side of earth, that heavy clime 417
The heavens rejoyce in motion, why should I 113
*The State and mens affaires are the best playes 414
The Sun-beames in the East are spred, 141
? This decent Urne a sad inscription weares, 389
This is my playes last scene, here heavens appoint 324
*This lyfe it is not life, it is a sight 437
This twilight of two yeares, not past nor next, 198
*Those drossy heads & irrepurged braynes 440
Thou art not so black, as my heart, 65
Thou art repriv'd old yeare, thou shalt not die, 135
Thou hast made me, And shall thy worke decay? 322
Thou in the fields walkst out thy supping howers, 78
Thou shalt not laugh in this leafe, Muse, nor they 168
Thou which art I, ('tis nothing to be soe) 175
Thou, whose diviner soule hath caus'd thee now 351
Though I be _dead_, and buried, yet I have 220
Thy father all from thee, by his last Will, 77
Thy flattering picture, _Phryne_, is like thee, 77
Thy friend, whom thy deserts to thee enchaine, 208
Thy sinnes and haires may no man equall call 77
Till I have peace with thee, warr other men, 122
'Tis lost, to trust a Tombe with such a quest, 245
Tis the yeares midnight, and it is the dayes, 44
'Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be? 23
*To sue for all thy Love, and thy whole hart 449
? To have liv'd eminent, in a degree 371
T'have written then, when you writ, seem'd to mee 195
To make the doubt cleare, that no woman's true, 108
To what a combersome unwieldinesse 55
_Transiit in Sequanam Moenus; Victoris in aedes;_ 397
*True Love findes witt, but he whose witt doth move 412
Twice or thrice had I loved thee, 22
Two, by themselves, each other, love and feare 75
? Two Soules move here, and mine (a third) must move 249

Vnder an undermin'd, and shot-bruis'd wall 76
Vnseasonable man, statue of ice, 131
Vpon this Primrose hill, 61
Vengeance will sit above our faults; but till 350

Well dy'd the World, that we might live to see 229
Well; I may now receive, and die; My sinne 158
Went you to conquer? and have so much lost 188
*What if I come to my mistris bedd 453
What if this present were the worlds last night? 328
*What is o^{r} life? a play of passion 441
When by thy scorne, O murdresse, I am dead, 47
*When fortune, love, and Tyme bad me be happie, 440
When I am dead, and Doctors know not why, 63
When I dyed last, and, Deare, I dye 20
When my grave is broke up againe 62
When that rich Soule which to her heaven is gone, 231
? When thy _Loose_ raptures, _Donne_, shall meet with Those 372
Where is that holy fire, which Verse is said 124
Where, like a pillow on a bed, 51
*Wherefore peepst thou, envious daye? 451
Whether that soule which now comes up to you 288
Whilst yet to prove, 70
? Who dares say thou art dead, when he doth see 384
Who ever comes to shroud me, do not harme 58
Who ever guesses, thinks, or dreames he knowes 41
Who ever loves, if he do not propose 116
Who makes the Past, a patterne for next yeare, 183
? Who shall doubt, _Donne_, where I a _Poet_ bee, 6
? Who shall presume to mourn thee, _Donne_, unlesse 382
Why are wee by all creatures waited on? 327
*Why chose shee black; was it that in whitenes 436
Why this man gelded _Martiall_ I muse, 78
Wilt thou forgive that sinne where I begunne, 369
Wilt thou forgive that sinn, where I begunn, 370
Wilt thou love God, as he thee! then digest, 329
With his kinde mother who partakes thy woe, 320
*Wonder of Beautie, Goddesse of my sense, 447

You have refin'd mee, and to worthyest things 191
You that are she and you, that's double shee, 227
Your mistris, that you follow whores, still taxeth you: 76

Zealously my Muse doth salute all thee, 207

* * * * *




OXFORD: HORACE HART, M. A.

PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY


* * * * *




Transcriber's Note:


- - indicates italic script; + + indicates Old English script;
= = indicates bold script or non-italic text within italic
passages; ^ or ^{} indicates a superscript.

Doubtful words or passages were checked against a 1968 reprint
of the 1933 edition, based, by the author, on this larger 1912
edition.

The Mediaeval long 's' has been replaced by the modern 's', but
usually the capital 'V' for 'U', and lower case v/u, u/v have
been retained (as in the 1968 reprint).

The spelling is, of course, early 17th century.

Unspaced punctuation, e. g. "Thy beauty,'and all parts,", is
as printed in this, and the 1968 reprint, and denotes elisions
(the running together of words to fit the metre).

In general, footnotes have been moved to the ends of their
relevant sections, and linenotes to the ends of their
relevant poems. An exception is on page 251 et seq. , where the
footnotes fit naturally in sequence with the linenotes.


'_See note_' (usually) refers to poem note in the Commentary
in Volume II.


Page 7: 'seelily', from Middle English, via Old English, Old
Saxon, West Germanic. . . . 'sely', 'seely', from 'saelig' etc.

'seely' also occurs in other poems.

The modern word 'silly' has evolved from Old English saelig
(holy, blessed, fortunate, prosperous, happy) through meanings
of 'innocent', 'naive', 'unworldly', 'foolish' . . . .


Page 65: 'A Ieat Ring Sent. ' Ieat = Jeat, probably jet,
a black semi-precious stone, popular in English costume
jewellery.

Page 95: Notes: Elegy X. 'S96' is given twice, with different
titles. Second entry possible error, but retained.

Page 251: The Author has placed the footnotes to the
sidenotes, in order, with the linenotes. This is probably the
least confusing place for them, so they have been retained
here.

Page 262: Printer's error: 'foveraigne' corrected to
'soveraigne'.

Page 276: Printer's error: _169-69_ corrected to _1639-69_.
"[176 them. _D_: them; _1633_, _1639-69_: them, _1635_]"

Pages 390-392: This Latin text contains a number of instances
of words ending in 'que', and a few instances (at the ends of
words) of the letter 'q' with an acute accent (stress mark)
and a subscript which looks like '3', but is 'Latin Small
Letter ET'.

This is a Mediaeval scribal abbreviation for 'que' (indicating
'and') at the ends of certain words. To avoid problems with
the text, all the abbreviated words in this passage have been
written out in full.

Page 405, line note 133: _OF_ corrected to _O'F_. Probable
printer's error.







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Title: The Poems of John Donne, Volume II (of 2)
Edited from the Old Editions and Numerous Manuscripts


Author: John Donne

Editor: Sir Herbert John Clifford Grierson

Release Date: April 24, 2015 [eBook #48772]

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THE POEMS OF JOHN DONNE

Edited from the Old Editions and Numerous Manuscripts
with Introductions & Commentary

by

HERBERT J. C. GRIERSON M. A.

Chalmers Professor of English Literature
in the University Of Aberdeen

VOL. II

Introduction and Commentary







Oxford
At the Clarendon Press
1912

Henry Frowde, M. A.
Publisher to the University of Oxford
London, Edinburgh, New York
Toronto and Melbourne




CONTENTS


PAGE
INTRODUCTION v

I. THE POETRY OF DONNE v

II. THE TEXT AND CANON OF DONNE'S POEMS lvi

COMMENTARY 1

INDEX OF FIRST LINES 276




INTRODUCTION


I

THE POETRY OF DONNE


Donne's position among English poets, regarded from the historical and
what we like to call scientific point of view, has been defined
with learning and discrimination by Mr. Courthope in his _History of
English Poetry_. As a phenomenon of curious interest for the student
of the history of thought and literary fashions, there it is. Mr.
Courthope is far too well-informed and judicious a critic to explain
Donne's subtle thought and erudite conceits by a reference to 'Marini
and his followers'. Gongora and Du Bartas are alike passed over in
silence. What we are shown is the connexion of 'metaphysical wit' with
the complex and far-reaching changes in men's conception of Nature
which make the seventeenth century perhaps the greatest epoch in human
thought since human thinking began.

The only thing that such a criticism leaves unexplained and undefined
is the interest which Donne's poetry still has for us, not as an
historical phenomenon, but as poetry. Literary history has for the
historian a quite distinct interest from that which it possesses for
the student and lover of literature. For the historian it is a
matter of positive interest to connect Donne's wit with the general
disintegration of mediaeval thought, to recognize the influence on
the Elizabethan drama of the doctrines of Machiavelli, or to find in
Pope's achievement in poetry a counterpart to Walpole's in politics.
For the lover of literature none of these facts has any positive
interest whatsoever. Donne's wit attracts or repels him equally
whatever be its source; Tamburlaine and Iago lose none of their
interest for us though we know nothing of Machiavelli; Pope's poetry
is not a whit more or less poetical by being a strange by-product of
the Whig spirit in English life. For the lover of literature, literary
history has an indirect value. He studies history that he may discount
it. What he relishes in a poet of the past is exactly the same
essential qualities as he enjoys in a poet of his own day--life and
passion and art. But between us and every poet or thinker of the past
hangs a thinner or thicker veil of outworn fashions and conventions.
The same life has clothed itself in different garbs; the same passions
have spoken in different images; the same art has adapted itself to
different circumstances. To the historian these old clothes are in
themselves a subject of interest. His enjoyment of Shakespeare is
heightened by finding the explanation of Falstaff's hose, Pistol's
hyperboles, and the poet's neglect of the Unities. To the lover of
literature they are, until by understanding he can discount them,
a disadvantage because they invest the work of the poet with an
irrelevant air of strangeness. He studies them that he may grow
familiar with them and forget them, that he may clear and intensify
his sense of what alone has permanent value, the poet's individuality
and the art in which it is expressed.

Donne's conceits, of which so much has been made and on whose
historical significance Mr. Courthope has probably said the last word,
are just like other examples of these old clothes. The question for
literature is not whence they came, but how he used them. Is he a
poet in virtue or in spite of them, or both? Are they fit only to be
gathered into a museum of antiquated fashions such as Johnson prefixed
to his study of the last poet who wore them in quite the old way
(for Dryden, who pilfered more freely from Donne than from any of his
predecessors, cut them to a new fashion), or are they the individual
and still expressive dress of a true and great poet, commanding
admiration in their own manner and degree as freshly and enduringly as
the stiff and brocaded magnificence of Milton's no less individual, no
less artificial style?

Donne's reputation as a poet has passed through many vicissitudes in
the course of the last three centuries. With regard to his 'wit',
its range and character, erudition and ingenuity, all generations of
critics have been at one. It is as to the relation of this 'wit' to,
and its effect on, his poetry that they have been at variance. To his
contemporaries the 'wit' was identical with the poetry. Donne's 'wit'
gave him the same supremacy among poets that learning and humour and
art gave to Jonson among dramatists. To certain of his Dutch admirers
the wit of _The Flea_ seemed superhuman, and the epitaph with which
Carew closes his _Elegy_ expresses the almost universal English
opinion of the seventeenth century:

Here lies a king that ruled as he thought fit
The universal monarchy of wit;
Here lies two flamens, and both those the best,
Apollo's first, at last the true God's priest.

It may be doubted if Milton shared this opinion. He never mentions
Donne, but it was probably of him or his imitators he was thinking
when in his verses at Cambridge he spoke of

those new-fangled toys and trimmings slight
Which take our late fantastics with delight.

Certainly the growing taste for 'correctness' led after the
Restoration to a discrimination between Donne's wit and his poetry.
'The greatest wit,' Dryden calls him, 'though not the greatest poet of
our nation. ' What he wanted as a poet were just the two essentials
of 'classical' poetry--smoothness of verse and dignity of expression.
This point of view is stated with clearness and piquancy in the
sentences of outrageous flattery which Dryden addressed to the Earl of
Dorset in the opening paragraphs of his delightful _Essay on Satire_:

'There is more of salt in all your verses, than I have seen in
any of the moderns, or even of the ancients; but you have
been sparing of the gall, by which means you have pleased
all readers, and offended none. Donne alone, of all our
countrymen, had your talent; but was not happy enough to
arrive at your versification; and were he translated into
numbers, and English, he would yet be wanting in the dignity
of expression. That which is the prime virtue, and chief
ornament, of Virgil, which distinguishes him from the rest
of writers, is so conspicuous in your verses, that it casts a
shadow on all your contemporaries; we cannot be seen, or
but obscurely, while you are present. You equal Donne in the
variety, multiplicity, and choice of thoughts; you excel him
in the manner and the words. I read you both with the same
admiration, but not with the same delight.

He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but
in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and
perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of
philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain
them with the softnesses of love. In this (if I may be
pardoned for so bold a truth) Mr. Cowley has copied him to
a fault; so great a one, in my opinion, that it throws
his Mistress infinitely below his Pindarics and his latter
compositions, which are undoubtedly the best of his poems and
the most correct. '

Dryden's estimate of Donne, as well as his application to his poetry
of the epithet 'metaphysical', was transmitted through the eighteenth
century. Johnson's famous paragraphs in the _Life of Cowley_ do little
more than echo and expand Dryden's pronouncement, with a rather vaguer
use of the word 'metaphysical'. In Dryden's application it means
correctly 'philosophical'; in Johnson's, no more than 'learned'. 'The
metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning
was their whole endeavour; but unluckily resolving to show it in
rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses, and very
often such verses as stood the trial of the fingers better than of
the ear. ' They 'drew their conceits from recesses of learning not very
much frequented by common readers of poetry'. Waller is exempted
from being a metaphysical poet because 'he seldom fetches an amorous
sentiment from the depths of science; his thoughts are for the most
part easily understood, and his images such as the superficies of
nature readily supplies'.

Even to those critics with whom began a revived appreciation of
Donne as a poet and preacher, his 'wit' still bulks largely. It
is impossible to escape from it. 'Wonder-exciting vigour,' writes
Coleridge, 'intenseness and peculiarity, using at will the almost
boundless stores of a capacious memory, and exercised on subjects
where we have no right to expect it--this is the wit of Donne. ' And
lastly De Quincey, who alone of these critics recognizes the essential
quality which may, and in his best work does, make Donne's wit the
instrument of a mind which is not only subtle and ingenious but
profoundly poetical: 'Few writers have shown a more extraordinary
compass of powers than Donne; for he combined what no other man has
ever done--the last sublimation of dialectical subtlety and address
with the most impassioned majesty. Massy diamonds compose the very
substance of his poem on the Metempsychosis, thoughts and descriptions
which have the fervent and gloomy sublimity of Ezekiel or Aeschylus,
whilst a diamond dust of rhetorical brilliancies is strewed over the
whole of his occasional verses and his prose. '

What is to-day the value and interest of this wit which has arrested
the attention of so many generations? How far does it seem to us
compatible with poetry in the full and generally accepted sense of
the word, with poetry which quickens the imagination and touches
the heart, which satisfies and delights, which is the verbal and
rhythmical medium whereby a gifted soul communicates to those who have
ears to hear the content of impassioned moments?

Before coming to close quarters with this difficult and debated
question one may in the first place insist that there is in Donne's
verse a great deal which, whether it be poetry in the full sense
of the word or not, is arresting and of worth both historically
and intrinsically. Whatever we may think of Donne's poetry, it is
impossible not to recognize the extraordinary interest of his mind and
character. In an age of great and fascinating men he is not the least
so. The immortal and transcendent genius of Shakespeare leaves Donne,
as every other contemporary, lost in the shadows and cross-lights of
an age that is no longer ours, but from which Shakespeare emerges
into the clear sunlight. Of Bacon's mind, 'deep and slow, exhausting
thought,' and divining as none other the direction in which the road
led through the debris of outworn learning to a renovated science and
a new philosophy, Donne could not boast. Alike in his poetry and in
his soberest prose, treatise or sermon, Donne's mind seems to want the
high seriousness which comes from a conviction that truth is, and
is to be found. A spirit of scepticism and paradox plays through and
disturbs almost everything he wrote, except at moments when an intense
mood of feeling, whether love or devotion, begets faith, and silences
the sceptical and destructive wit by the power of vision rather than
of intellectual conviction. Poles apart as the two poets seem at a
first glance to lie in feeling and in art, there is yet something of
Tennyson in the conflict which wages perpetually in Donne's poetry
between feeling and intellect.

But short of the highest gifts of serene imagination or serene wisdom
Donne's mind has every power it well could, wit, insight, imagination;
and these move in such a strange medium of feeling and learning,
mediaeval, renaissance and modern, that every imprint becomes of
interest. To do full justice to that interest one's study of
Donne must include his prose as well as his verse, his paradoxical
_Pseudomartyr_, and equally paradoxical, more strangely mooded
_Biathanatos_, the intense and subtle eloquence of his sermons,
the tormented passion and wit of his devotions, and the gaiety
and melancholy, wit and wisdom, of his letters. But most of these
qualities have left their mark on his poetry, and given it interests
over and above its worth simply as poetry.

One quality of his verse, which has been somewhat overlooked by
critics intent upon the definition and sources of metaphysical wit, is
wit in our sense of the word, wit like the wit of Swift and Sheridan.
The habit in which this wit masquerades is doubtless old-fashioned. It
is not always the worse for that, for the wit of the Elizabethans
is delightfully blended with fancy and feeling. There is a little
of Jaques in all of them. But if fanciful and at times even boyish,
Donne's wit is still amusing, the quickest and most fertile wit of the
century till we come to the author of _Hudibras_.

It is not in the _Satyres_ that this wit is to us most obvious.
Nothing grows so soon out of date as contemporary satire. Even the
brilliance and polish of Pope's satire--and Pope's art is nowhere more
perfect than in _The Dunciad_ and the _Imitations of Horace_--cannot
interest us in Lord Hervey, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and
the forgotten poets of an unpoetic age. How then should we be
interested in Elizabeth's fantastic 'Presence', the streets of
sixteenth-century London, and the knavery of pursuivants, presented
with a satiric art which is wonderfully vivid and caustic but still
tentative,--over-emphatic, rough in style and verse, though with a
roughness which is obviously a studied and in a measure successful
effect. The verses upon _Coryats Crudities_ are in their way a
masterpiece of insult veiled as compliment, but it is a rather boyish
and barbarous way.