I have consulted support 'stage'; and this gives
the best meaning: 'Alive, I shall continue to be the stage on which
your victories are daily set forth; dead, I shall be but your triumph,
a thing achieved once, never to be repeated.
the best meaning: 'Alive, I shall continue to be the stage on which
your victories are daily set forth; dead, I shall be but your triumph,
a thing achieved once, never to be repeated.
Donne - 2
With this precious relique about his arm,' (compare _The
Relique_, p. 62) 'whose least hair was sufficient' (compare _Aire and
Angels_, p. 22, 'Ev'ry thy hair' and note) 'to bind in bonds of love
the greatest heart that ever was informed with life, Theagenes took
his journey into Attica. ' Kenelm Digby's _Private Memoirs_ (1827), pp.
80-1. When later Theagenes heard that Stelliana (believing Theagenes
to be dead) was to wed Mardonius, 'he tore from his arm the bracelet
of her hair . . . and threw it into the fire that was in his chamber;
when that glorious relic burning shewed by the wan and blue colour
of the flame that it had sense and took his words unkindly in her
behalf. '
Theagenes was Sir Kenelm Digby himself, Stelliana being Lady Venetia
Stanley, afterwards his wife. Mardonius was probably Edward, Earl of
Dorset, the brother of Donne's friend and patron.
It is probable that this sequence of poems, _The Funerall_, _The
Blossome_, _The Primrose_ and _The Relique_, was addressed to Mrs.
Herbert in the earlier days of Donne's intimacy with her in Oxford or
London.
l. 24. _That since you would save none of me, I bury some of you. _ I
have hesitated a good deal over this line. The reading of the editions
is 'have none of me'; and in the group of MSS. _D_, _H49_, _Lec_,
while _H49_ reads 'save', _D_ has corrected 'have' to what _may_ be
'save', and _Lec_ reads 'have'. The reading of the editions is the
full form of the construction, which is more common without the
'have'. 'It's four to one she'll none of me,' _Twelfth Night_, I.
iii. 113; 'She will none of him,' Ibid. II. ii. 9, are among Schmidt's
examples (_Shakespeare Lexicon_), in none of which 'have' occurs.
The reading of the MSS. , 'save none of me,' is also quite idiomatic,
resembling the ' fear none of this' (i. e. 'do not fear this') of
_Winter's Tale_, IV. iv. 601; and I have preferred it because: (1) It
seems difficult to understand how it could have arisen if 'have none'
was the original. (2) It gives a sharper antithesis, 'You would not
save me, keep me alive. Therefore I will bury, not you indeed, but
a part of you. ' (3) To be saved is the lover's usual prayer; and the
idea of the poem is that his death is due to the lady's cruelty.
Come not, when I am dead,
To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,
To trample round my fallen head,
And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.
There let the wind sweep and the plover cry;
But thou go by.
Compare also the Letter _To M^{rs} M. H. _ (pp. 216-8), where the same
idea recurs:
When thou art there, if any, whom we know,
Were sav'd before, and did that heaven partake, &c.
PAGE =59=. THE BLOSSOME.
l. 10. _labour'st. _ The form with 't' occurs in most of the MSS. , and
't' is restored in _1635_. The 'labours' of _1633_ represents a
common dropping of the 't' for ease of pronunciation. See Franz,
_Shakespeare-Grammatik_, § 152. It is colloquial, and I doubt if Donne
would have preserved it if he had printed the poem, supposing that he
wrote the word so, and not some copyist.
ll. 21-4. _You goe to friends, whose love and meanes present
Various content
To your eyes, eares, and tongue, and every part:
If then your body goe, what need you a heart? _
I have adopted the MS. readings 'tongue' and 'what need you a heart? '
because they seem to me more certainly what Donne wrote. He may have
altered them, but so may an editor. 'Tongue' is more exactly parallel
to eyes and ears, and the whole talk is of organs. 'What need you a
heart? ' is more pointed. 'With these organs of sense, what need have
you of a heart? ' The idiom was not uncommon, the verb being used
impersonally. The O. E. D. gives among others:
What need us so many instances abroad.
_Andros Tracts_, 1691.
'What need your heart go' is of course also idiomatic. The latest
example the O. E. D. gives is from Hall's _Satires_, 1597: 'What needs
me care for any bookish skill? '
PAGE =61=. THE PRIMROSE, &c.
It is noteworthy that the addition 'being at Montgomery Castle', &c.
was made in _1635_. It is unknown to _1633_ and the MSS. It may be
unwarranted. If it be accurate, then the poem is probably addressed
to Mrs. Herbert and is a half mystical, half cynical description of
Platonic passion. The perfect primrose has apparently five petals, but
more or less may be found. Seeking for one to symbolize his love, he
fears to find either more or less. What can be less than woman? But if
more than woman she becomes that unreal thing, the object of Platonic
affection and Petrarchian adoration: but, as he says elsewhere,
Love's not so pure and abstract as they use
To say, which have no Mistresse but their Muse.
Let woman be content to be herself. Since five is half ten, united
with man she will be half of a perfect life; or (and the cynical
humour breaks out again) if she is not content with that, since five
is the first number which includes an even number (2) and an odd (3),
it may claim to be the perfect number, and she to be the whole in
which we men are included and absorbed. We have no will of our own.
'From Sarai's name He took a letter which expressed the number ten,
and reposed one which made but five; so that she contributed that
five which man wanted before, to show a mutual indigence and support. '
_Essays in Divinity_ (Jessop, 1855), p. 118.
'Even for this, he will visite to the third, and fourth generation;
and three and foure are seven, and seven is infinite. _Sermons_ 50.
47. 440.
l. 30. _this, five,_ I have introduced a comma after 'this' to show
what, I think, must be the relation of the words. The later editions
drop 'this', and it seems to me probable that an original reading and
a correction have survived side by side. Donne may have written 'this'
alone, referring back to 'five', and then, thinking the reference too
remote, he may have substituted 'five' in the margin, whence it crept
into the text without completely displacing 'this'. The support which
the MSS. lend to _1633_ make it dangerous to remove either word now,
but I have thought it well to show that 'this' _is_ 'five'. In
the MSS. when a word is erased a line is drawn under it and the
substituted word placed in the margin.
PAGE =62=. THE RELIQUE.
l. 13. _Where mis-devotion doth command. _ The unanimity of the earlier
editions and the MSS. shows clearly that 'Mass-devotion' (which
Chambers adopts) is merely an ingenious conjecture of the _1669_
editor. Donne uses the word frequently, e. g. :
Here in a place, where miss-devotion frames
A thousand Prayers to Saints, whose very names
The ancient Church knew not, &c.
_Of the Progresse of the Soule_, p. 266, ll. 511-13.
and: 'This mis-devotion, and left-handed piety, of praying for the
dead. ' _Sermons_ 80. 77. 780.
l. 17. _You shalbe. _ I have recorded this reading of several MSS.
because the poem is probably addressed to Mrs. Herbert and Donne may
have so written. His discrimination of 'thou' and 'you' is very marked
throughout the poems. 'Thou' is the pronoun of feeling and intimacy,
'you' of respect. Compare 'To Mrs. M. H. ', and remember that Mrs.
Herbert's name was Magdalen.
ll. 27-8. _Comming and going, wee Perchance might kisse, but not
between those meales_: i. e. the kiss of salutation and parting. In a
sermon on the text 'Kisse the Son, lest he be angry', Donne enumerates
the uses of kissing sanctioned by the Bible, and this among them: 'Now
by this we are slid into our fourth and last branch of our first
part, The perswasion to come to this holy kisse, though defamed by
treachery, though depraved by licentiousnesse, since God invites us to
it, by so many good uses thereof in his Word. It is an imputation laid
upon _Nero_, that _Neque adveniens neque proficiscens_, That whether
comming or going he never kissed any: And Christ himself imputes it
to _Simon_, as a neglect of him, That when he _came into his house_ he
did not _kisse_ him. This then was in use', &c. _Sermons_ 80. 41. 407.
The kiss of salutation lasted in some countries till the later
eighteenth century, perhaps still lasts. See Rousseau's _Confessions_,
Bk. 9, and Byron's _Childe Harold_, III. lxxix.
But Erasmus, in 1499, speaks as though it were a specially English
custom: 'Est praeterea mos nunquam satis laudatus. Sive quo venis,
omnium osculis exciperis; sive discedis aliquo, osculis dimitteris;
redis, redduntur suavia; venitur ad te, propinantur suavia; disceditur
abs te, dividuntur basia; occurritur alicubi, basiatur affatim;
denique quocunque te moves, suaviorum plena sunt omnia. '
PAGE =64=. THE DISSOLUTION.
l. 10. _earthly sad despaire. _ Cf. O. E. D. : 'Earthly. 3. Partaking of
the nature of earth, resembling earth as a substance, consisting of
earth as an element; = Earthy, archaic or obsolete. ' The form was
used as late as 1843, but the change in the later editions of Donne
indicates that it was growing rare in this sense. Compare,'A young
man of a softly disposition. ' Camden's _Reign of Elizabeth_ (English
transl. ).
PAGE =66=. NEGATIVE LOVE.
l. 15. _What we know not, our selves. _ 'All creatures were brought to
Adam, and, because he understood the natures of all those creatures,
he gave them names accordingly. In that he gave no name to himselfe it
may be by some perhaps argued, that he understood himselfe lesse then
he did other creatures. ' _Sermons_ 80. 50. 563.
PAGE =67=. THE PROHIBITION.
l. 18. _So, these extreames shall neithers office doe. _ The 'neithers'
of _D_, _H40_, _JC_, supported by 'neyther' in _O'F_ and 'neyther
their' in _Cy_, is much more characteristic than 'ne'er their', and
more likely to have been altered than to have been substituted for
'ne'er their'. The reading of _Cy_ shows how the phrase puzzled an
ordinary copyist. 'These extremes shall by counteracting each other
prevent either from fulfilling his function. ' Compare, 'As two
yoke-devils sworn to either's purpose' (i. e. each to the other's
purpose). Shakespeare, _Hen. V_, II. ii. 107.
l. 22. _So shall I, live, thy stage not triumph bee. _ I have placed
a comma after I to make quite clear that 'live' is the adjective, not
the verb. The 'stay' of _1633_ is defensible, but the _1633_ editor
was somewhat at sea about this poem, witness the variations introduced
while the edition was printing in ll. 20 and 24 and the misprinting
of l. 5. All the MSS.
I have consulted support 'stage'; and this gives
the best meaning: 'Alive, I shall continue to be the stage on which
your victories are daily set forth; dead, I shall be but your triumph,
a thing achieved once, never to be repeated. ' Compare:
And cause her leave to triumph in this wise
Upon the prostrate spoil of that poor heart!
That serves a Trophy to her conquering eyes,
And must their glory to the world impart.
Daniel, _Delia_, X.
ll. 23, 24. There are obviously two versions of these lines which the
later editions have confounded. The first is that of the text, from
_1633_. The second is that of the MSS. and runs, properly pointed:
Then lest thy love, hate, and mee thou undoe,
O let me live, O love and hate me too.
The punctuation of the MSS. is very careless, but the lines as printed
are quite intelligible. As given in the editions _1635-69_ they are
nonsensical.
PAGE =68=. THE EXPIRATION.
l. 5. _We ask'd. _ The past tense of the MSS. makes the antithesis
and sense more pointed. 'It was with no one's leave we lov'd to begin
with, and we will owe to no one the death that comes with parting. '
ll. 7 f. _Goe: and if that word have not quite kil'd thee,
Ease mee with death, by bidding mee goe too_.
Compare:
_Val. _ No more: unless the next word that thou speak'st
Have some malignant power upon my life:
If so, I pray thee, breathe it in mine ear,
As ending anthem of my endless dolour.
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, III. i. 236 f.
PAGE =70=. THE PARADOX.
l. 14. _lights life. _ The MSS. correct the obvious mistake of the
editions, 'lifes light. ' The 'lights life' is, of course, the sun.
In the same way at 21 'lye' is surely better suited than 'dye' to an
epitaph. This poem is not in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and _1633_ has printed
it from _A18_, _N_, _TC_.
In the latter group of MSS. this poem is followed immediately by
another of the same kind, which is found also in _H40_, _RP31_, and
_O'F_, as well as several more miscellaneous MSS. I print from _TCC_:
A PARADOX.
Whosoe termes Love a fire, may like a poet
Faine what he will, for certaine cannot showe it.
For Fire nere burnes, but when the fuell's neare
But Love doth at most distance most appeare.
Yet out of fire water did never goe,
But teares from Love abundantly doe flowe.
Fire still mounts upward; but Love oft descendeth.
Fire leaves the midst: Love to the Center tendeth.
Fire dryes and hardens: Love doth mollifie.
Fire doth consume, but Love doth fructifie.
The powerful Queene of Love (faire Venus) came
Descended from the Sea, not from the flame,
Whence passions ebbe and flowe, and from the braine
Run to the hart like streames, and back againe.
Yea Love oft fills mens breasts with melting snow
Drowning their Love-sick minds in flouds of woe.
What is Love, water then? it may be soe;
But hee saith trueth, that saith hee doth not knowe.
FINIS.
PAGE =71=. FAREWELL TO LOVE.
l. 12. _His highnesse &c. _ 'Presumably his highness was made of gilt
gingerbread. ' Chambers. See Jonson, _Bartholomew Fair_, III. i.
ll. 28-30. As these lines stand in the old editions they are
unintelligible:
Because that other curse of being short,
And only for a minute made to be
Eager, desires to raise posterity.
Grosart prints:
Because that other curse of being short
And--only-for-a-minute-made-to-be--
Eager desires to raise posterity.
This and the note which he appends I find more incomprehensible than
the old text. This is his note: 'The whole sense then is: Unless
Nature decreed this in order that man should despise it, (just) as
she made it short, that man might for that reason also despise a
sport that was only for a minute made to be eager desires to raise
posterity. ' Surely this is Abracadabra!
What has happened is, I believe, this: Donne here, as elsewhere, used
an obsolescent word, viz. 'eagers', the verb, meaning 'sharpens'. The
copyist did not recognize the form, took 'desire' for the verb, and
made 'eager' the adjectival complement to 'be', changing 'desire'
to 'desires' as predicate to 'curse'. What Donne had in mind was
the Aristotelian doctrine that the desire to beget children is
an expression of man's craving for immortality. The most natural
function, according to Aristotle, of every living thing which is not
maimed in any way is to beget another living thing like itself, that
so it may partake of what is eternal and divine. This participation
is the goal of all desire, and of all natural activity. But perishable
individuals cannot partake of the immortal and divine by continuous
existence. Nothing that is perishable can continue always one and the
same individual. Each, therefore, participates as best he may, some
more, some less; remaining the same in a way, i. e. in the species, not
in the individual. ' (_De Anima_, B. 4. 415 A-B. ) Donne's argument then
is this: 'Why of all animals have we alone this feeling of depression
and remorse after the act of love? Is it a device of nature to
restrain us from an act which shortens the life of the individual (he
refers here to a prevalent belief as to the deleterious effect of the
act of love), needed because that other curse which Adam brought upon
man, the curse of mortality,
of being short,
And only for a minute made to be,
Eagers [i. e. whets or provokes] desire to raise posterity. '
The latest use of 'eager' as a verb quoted by the O. E. D. is from
Mulcaster's _Positions_ (1581), where the sense is that of imitating
physically: 'They that be gawled . . . may neither runne nor wrastle
for eagering the inward'. The Middle English use is closer to Donne's:
'The nature of som men is so . . . unconvenable that . . . poverte myhte
rather egren hym to don felonies. ' Chaucer, Boëth. _De Consol. Phil. _
In the Burley MS. (seventeenth century) the following epigram on
Bancroft appears:
A learned Bishop of this land
Thinking to make religion stand,
In equall poise on every syde
The mixture of them thus he tryde:
An ounce of protestants he singles
And a dramme of papists mingles,
Then adds a scruple of a puritan
And melts them down in his brayne pan,
But where hee lookes they should digest
The scruple eagers all the rest.
In Harl. MS. 4908 f. 83 the last line reads:
That scruple troubles all the rest.
PAGE =71=. A LECTURE UPON THE SHADOW.
The text of this poem in the editions is that of _A18_, _N_, _TC_
among the MSS. A slightly different recension is found in most of the
other MSS. The chief difference is that the latter read 'love' for
'loves' at ll. 9, 14, and 19. They also, however, read 'least' for
'high'st' at l. 12. In l. 19 they vacillate between 'once' and 'our'.
It would not be difficult to defend either version. The only variation
from the printed text which I have admitted is that on which all the
MSS. are unanimous, viz. 'first' for 'short' in l. 26; 'short' is an
obvious blunder.
NOTE ON THE MUSIC TO WHICH CERTAIN OF DONNE'S SONGS WERE SET.
A song meant for the Elizabethans a poem intended to be sung,
generally to the accompaniment of the lute. Donne had clearly no
thought of his songs being an exception to this rule:
But when I have done so,
Some man his art and voice to show
Doth set and sing my paine.
Yet it is difficult to think of some, perhaps the majority, of Donne's
_Songs and Sonets_ as being written to be sung. Their sonorous and
rhetorical rhythm, the elaborate stanzas which, like the prolonged
periods of the _Elegies_, seem to give us a foretaste of the Miltonic
verse-paragraph, suggest speech,--impassioned, rhythmical speech
rather than the melody of song. We are not haunted by a sense of the
tune to which the song should go, as we are in reading the lyrics of
the Elizabethan Anthologies or of Robert Burns. Yet some of Donne's
songs _were_ set to music. A note in one group of MSS. describes three
of them as 'Songs which were made to certain ayres which were made
before'. One of these is _The Baite_, which must have been set to
the same air as Marlowe's song. I reproduce here a lute-accompaniment
found in William Corkine's _Second Book of Ayres_ (1612). The airs of
the other two (see p. 18) I have not been able to find, nor are they
known to Mr. Barclay Squire, who has kindly helped and guided me in
this matter of the music. With his aid I have reproduced here the
music of two other songs, and, at another place, that of one of
Donne's great _Hymns_.
PAGE =8=. SONG.
The following air is found in Egerton MS. 2013. As given here it has
been conjecturally corrected by Mr. Barclay Squire:
[Music:
Go and catch a falling star
Get with child a mandrake roote,
Tell me where all past times are
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaid's singing
Or to keep of Envy's singing
And find
what wind
Serves to advance an honest mind. ]
PAGE =23=. BREAKE OF DAY.
This is set to the following air in Corkine's _Second Book of Ayres_
(1612). As given here it has been transcribed by Mr. Barclay Squire,
omitting the lute accompaniment:
[Music:
'Tis true 'tis day, What though it be?
And will you there-fore rise from me?
What, will you rise, What, will you rise be-cause 'tis light?
Did we lye downe be-cause 'twas night?
Love that in spight of dark-nesse brought us he-ther,
In spight of light should keepe us still to-ge-ther,
In spight of light should keepe us still to-ge-ther,
In spight of light should keepe us still to-ge-ther. ]
PAGE =46=. THE BAITE.
From Corkine's _Second Book of Ayres_ (1612).
[Music: _Lessons for the Lyra Violl. _
Come liue with me, and be my Loue. ]
EPIGRAMS.
PAGES =75-8=. Of the epigrams sixteen are given in all the editions,
_1633-69_. Of these, thirteen are in _A18_, _N_, _TC_, none in _D_,
_H49_, _Lec_. Of the remaining three, two are in _W_, one in _HN_,
both good authorities. I have added three of interest from _W_, of
which one is in _HN_, and all three are in _O'F_. _W_ includes among
the _Epigrams_ the short poem _On a Jeat Ring Sent_, printed generally
with the _Songs and Sonets_. In _HN_ there is one and in the Burley
MS. are three more. Of these the one in _HN_ and two of those in _Bur_
are merely coarse, and there is no use burdening Donne with more of
this kind than he is already responsible for. The last in _Bur_ runs:
Why are maydes wits than boyes of lower strayne?
Eve was a daughter of the ribb not brayne.
Donne's epigrams were much admired, and some of his elegies were
classed with them as satirical 'evaporations of wit'. Drummond says:
'I think if he would he might easily be the best epigrammatist we
have found in English; of which I have not yet seen any come near
the Ancients. Compare his Marry and Love with Tasso's stanzas against
beauty; one shall hardly know who hath best. ' The stanzas referred to
are entitled _Sopra la bellezza_, and begin:
Questo che tanto il cieco volgo apprezza.
PAGE =75=. PYRAMUS AND THISBE. The Grolier Club edition prints the
first line of this epigram,
Two by themselves each other love and fear,
which suggests that 'love' and 'fear' are verbs. As punctuated in
_1633_ the epigram is condensed but precise: 'These two, slain by
themselves, by each other, by fear, and by love, are joined here in
one tomb, by the friends whose cruel action in parting them brought
them together here. ' Every point in the epigram corresponds to the
incidents of the story as narrated in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, iv.
55-165. The closing line runs:
Quodque rogis superest, una requiescit in urna.
A BURNT SHIP. In _W_ the title is given in Italian, in _O'F_ in
Latin. Compare James's letter to Salisbury on the Dutch demands for
assistance against Spain;--'Should I ruin myself for maintaining
them. . . . I look that by a peace they should enrich themselves to pay
me my debts, and if they be so weak as they cannot subsist, either in
peace or war, without I ruin myself for upholding them, in that case
surely the nearest harm is to be first eschewed: _a man will leap out
of a burning ship and drown himself in the sea_; and it is doubtless
a farther off harm from me to suffer them to fall again into the hands
of Spain, and let God provide for the danger that may with time fall
upon me or my posterity, than presently to starve myself and mine
with putting the meat in their mouth. ' _The King to Salisbury_, 1607,
Hatfield MSS. , quoted in Gardiner's _History of England_, ii. 25.
PAGE =76=. A LAME BEGGER. Compare:
Dull says he is so weake, he cannot rise,
Nor stand, nor goe; if that be true, he lyes.
Finis quoth R.
Thomas Deloney, _Strange Histories of Songes & Sonets of
Kings, Princes, Dukes, Lords, Ladyes, Knights and Gentlemen.
Very pleasant either to be read or songe, &c. _, 1607.
Relique_, p. 62) 'whose least hair was sufficient' (compare _Aire and
Angels_, p. 22, 'Ev'ry thy hair' and note) 'to bind in bonds of love
the greatest heart that ever was informed with life, Theagenes took
his journey into Attica. ' Kenelm Digby's _Private Memoirs_ (1827), pp.
80-1. When later Theagenes heard that Stelliana (believing Theagenes
to be dead) was to wed Mardonius, 'he tore from his arm the bracelet
of her hair . . . and threw it into the fire that was in his chamber;
when that glorious relic burning shewed by the wan and blue colour
of the flame that it had sense and took his words unkindly in her
behalf. '
Theagenes was Sir Kenelm Digby himself, Stelliana being Lady Venetia
Stanley, afterwards his wife. Mardonius was probably Edward, Earl of
Dorset, the brother of Donne's friend and patron.
It is probable that this sequence of poems, _The Funerall_, _The
Blossome_, _The Primrose_ and _The Relique_, was addressed to Mrs.
Herbert in the earlier days of Donne's intimacy with her in Oxford or
London.
l. 24. _That since you would save none of me, I bury some of you. _ I
have hesitated a good deal over this line. The reading of the editions
is 'have none of me'; and in the group of MSS. _D_, _H49_, _Lec_,
while _H49_ reads 'save', _D_ has corrected 'have' to what _may_ be
'save', and _Lec_ reads 'have'. The reading of the editions is the
full form of the construction, which is more common without the
'have'. 'It's four to one she'll none of me,' _Twelfth Night_, I.
iii. 113; 'She will none of him,' Ibid. II. ii. 9, are among Schmidt's
examples (_Shakespeare Lexicon_), in none of which 'have' occurs.
The reading of the MSS. , 'save none of me,' is also quite idiomatic,
resembling the ' fear none of this' (i. e. 'do not fear this') of
_Winter's Tale_, IV. iv. 601; and I have preferred it because: (1) It
seems difficult to understand how it could have arisen if 'have none'
was the original. (2) It gives a sharper antithesis, 'You would not
save me, keep me alive. Therefore I will bury, not you indeed, but
a part of you. ' (3) To be saved is the lover's usual prayer; and the
idea of the poem is that his death is due to the lady's cruelty.
Come not, when I am dead,
To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,
To trample round my fallen head,
And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.
There let the wind sweep and the plover cry;
But thou go by.
Compare also the Letter _To M^{rs} M. H. _ (pp. 216-8), where the same
idea recurs:
When thou art there, if any, whom we know,
Were sav'd before, and did that heaven partake, &c.
PAGE =59=. THE BLOSSOME.
l. 10. _labour'st. _ The form with 't' occurs in most of the MSS. , and
't' is restored in _1635_. The 'labours' of _1633_ represents a
common dropping of the 't' for ease of pronunciation. See Franz,
_Shakespeare-Grammatik_, § 152. It is colloquial, and I doubt if Donne
would have preserved it if he had printed the poem, supposing that he
wrote the word so, and not some copyist.
ll. 21-4. _You goe to friends, whose love and meanes present
Various content
To your eyes, eares, and tongue, and every part:
If then your body goe, what need you a heart? _
I have adopted the MS. readings 'tongue' and 'what need you a heart? '
because they seem to me more certainly what Donne wrote. He may have
altered them, but so may an editor. 'Tongue' is more exactly parallel
to eyes and ears, and the whole talk is of organs. 'What need you a
heart? ' is more pointed. 'With these organs of sense, what need have
you of a heart? ' The idiom was not uncommon, the verb being used
impersonally. The O. E. D. gives among others:
What need us so many instances abroad.
_Andros Tracts_, 1691.
'What need your heart go' is of course also idiomatic. The latest
example the O. E. D. gives is from Hall's _Satires_, 1597: 'What needs
me care for any bookish skill? '
PAGE =61=. THE PRIMROSE, &c.
It is noteworthy that the addition 'being at Montgomery Castle', &c.
was made in _1635_. It is unknown to _1633_ and the MSS. It may be
unwarranted. If it be accurate, then the poem is probably addressed
to Mrs. Herbert and is a half mystical, half cynical description of
Platonic passion. The perfect primrose has apparently five petals, but
more or less may be found. Seeking for one to symbolize his love, he
fears to find either more or less. What can be less than woman? But if
more than woman she becomes that unreal thing, the object of Platonic
affection and Petrarchian adoration: but, as he says elsewhere,
Love's not so pure and abstract as they use
To say, which have no Mistresse but their Muse.
Let woman be content to be herself. Since five is half ten, united
with man she will be half of a perfect life; or (and the cynical
humour breaks out again) if she is not content with that, since five
is the first number which includes an even number (2) and an odd (3),
it may claim to be the perfect number, and she to be the whole in
which we men are included and absorbed. We have no will of our own.
'From Sarai's name He took a letter which expressed the number ten,
and reposed one which made but five; so that she contributed that
five which man wanted before, to show a mutual indigence and support. '
_Essays in Divinity_ (Jessop, 1855), p. 118.
'Even for this, he will visite to the third, and fourth generation;
and three and foure are seven, and seven is infinite. _Sermons_ 50.
47. 440.
l. 30. _this, five,_ I have introduced a comma after 'this' to show
what, I think, must be the relation of the words. The later editions
drop 'this', and it seems to me probable that an original reading and
a correction have survived side by side. Donne may have written 'this'
alone, referring back to 'five', and then, thinking the reference too
remote, he may have substituted 'five' in the margin, whence it crept
into the text without completely displacing 'this'. The support which
the MSS. lend to _1633_ make it dangerous to remove either word now,
but I have thought it well to show that 'this' _is_ 'five'. In
the MSS. when a word is erased a line is drawn under it and the
substituted word placed in the margin.
PAGE =62=. THE RELIQUE.
l. 13. _Where mis-devotion doth command. _ The unanimity of the earlier
editions and the MSS. shows clearly that 'Mass-devotion' (which
Chambers adopts) is merely an ingenious conjecture of the _1669_
editor. Donne uses the word frequently, e. g. :
Here in a place, where miss-devotion frames
A thousand Prayers to Saints, whose very names
The ancient Church knew not, &c.
_Of the Progresse of the Soule_, p. 266, ll. 511-13.
and: 'This mis-devotion, and left-handed piety, of praying for the
dead. ' _Sermons_ 80. 77. 780.
l. 17. _You shalbe. _ I have recorded this reading of several MSS.
because the poem is probably addressed to Mrs. Herbert and Donne may
have so written. His discrimination of 'thou' and 'you' is very marked
throughout the poems. 'Thou' is the pronoun of feeling and intimacy,
'you' of respect. Compare 'To Mrs. M. H. ', and remember that Mrs.
Herbert's name was Magdalen.
ll. 27-8. _Comming and going, wee Perchance might kisse, but not
between those meales_: i. e. the kiss of salutation and parting. In a
sermon on the text 'Kisse the Son, lest he be angry', Donne enumerates
the uses of kissing sanctioned by the Bible, and this among them: 'Now
by this we are slid into our fourth and last branch of our first
part, The perswasion to come to this holy kisse, though defamed by
treachery, though depraved by licentiousnesse, since God invites us to
it, by so many good uses thereof in his Word. It is an imputation laid
upon _Nero_, that _Neque adveniens neque proficiscens_, That whether
comming or going he never kissed any: And Christ himself imputes it
to _Simon_, as a neglect of him, That when he _came into his house_ he
did not _kisse_ him. This then was in use', &c. _Sermons_ 80. 41. 407.
The kiss of salutation lasted in some countries till the later
eighteenth century, perhaps still lasts. See Rousseau's _Confessions_,
Bk. 9, and Byron's _Childe Harold_, III. lxxix.
But Erasmus, in 1499, speaks as though it were a specially English
custom: 'Est praeterea mos nunquam satis laudatus. Sive quo venis,
omnium osculis exciperis; sive discedis aliquo, osculis dimitteris;
redis, redduntur suavia; venitur ad te, propinantur suavia; disceditur
abs te, dividuntur basia; occurritur alicubi, basiatur affatim;
denique quocunque te moves, suaviorum plena sunt omnia. '
PAGE =64=. THE DISSOLUTION.
l. 10. _earthly sad despaire. _ Cf. O. E. D. : 'Earthly. 3. Partaking of
the nature of earth, resembling earth as a substance, consisting of
earth as an element; = Earthy, archaic or obsolete. ' The form was
used as late as 1843, but the change in the later editions of Donne
indicates that it was growing rare in this sense. Compare,'A young
man of a softly disposition. ' Camden's _Reign of Elizabeth_ (English
transl. ).
PAGE =66=. NEGATIVE LOVE.
l. 15. _What we know not, our selves. _ 'All creatures were brought to
Adam, and, because he understood the natures of all those creatures,
he gave them names accordingly. In that he gave no name to himselfe it
may be by some perhaps argued, that he understood himselfe lesse then
he did other creatures. ' _Sermons_ 80. 50. 563.
PAGE =67=. THE PROHIBITION.
l. 18. _So, these extreames shall neithers office doe. _ The 'neithers'
of _D_, _H40_, _JC_, supported by 'neyther' in _O'F_ and 'neyther
their' in _Cy_, is much more characteristic than 'ne'er their', and
more likely to have been altered than to have been substituted for
'ne'er their'. The reading of _Cy_ shows how the phrase puzzled an
ordinary copyist. 'These extremes shall by counteracting each other
prevent either from fulfilling his function. ' Compare, 'As two
yoke-devils sworn to either's purpose' (i. e. each to the other's
purpose). Shakespeare, _Hen. V_, II. ii. 107.
l. 22. _So shall I, live, thy stage not triumph bee. _ I have placed
a comma after I to make quite clear that 'live' is the adjective, not
the verb. The 'stay' of _1633_ is defensible, but the _1633_ editor
was somewhat at sea about this poem, witness the variations introduced
while the edition was printing in ll. 20 and 24 and the misprinting
of l. 5. All the MSS.
I have consulted support 'stage'; and this gives
the best meaning: 'Alive, I shall continue to be the stage on which
your victories are daily set forth; dead, I shall be but your triumph,
a thing achieved once, never to be repeated. ' Compare:
And cause her leave to triumph in this wise
Upon the prostrate spoil of that poor heart!
That serves a Trophy to her conquering eyes,
And must their glory to the world impart.
Daniel, _Delia_, X.
ll. 23, 24. There are obviously two versions of these lines which the
later editions have confounded. The first is that of the text, from
_1633_. The second is that of the MSS. and runs, properly pointed:
Then lest thy love, hate, and mee thou undoe,
O let me live, O love and hate me too.
The punctuation of the MSS. is very careless, but the lines as printed
are quite intelligible. As given in the editions _1635-69_ they are
nonsensical.
PAGE =68=. THE EXPIRATION.
l. 5. _We ask'd. _ The past tense of the MSS. makes the antithesis
and sense more pointed. 'It was with no one's leave we lov'd to begin
with, and we will owe to no one the death that comes with parting. '
ll. 7 f. _Goe: and if that word have not quite kil'd thee,
Ease mee with death, by bidding mee goe too_.
Compare:
_Val. _ No more: unless the next word that thou speak'st
Have some malignant power upon my life:
If so, I pray thee, breathe it in mine ear,
As ending anthem of my endless dolour.
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, III. i. 236 f.
PAGE =70=. THE PARADOX.
l. 14. _lights life. _ The MSS. correct the obvious mistake of the
editions, 'lifes light. ' The 'lights life' is, of course, the sun.
In the same way at 21 'lye' is surely better suited than 'dye' to an
epitaph. This poem is not in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and _1633_ has printed
it from _A18_, _N_, _TC_.
In the latter group of MSS. this poem is followed immediately by
another of the same kind, which is found also in _H40_, _RP31_, and
_O'F_, as well as several more miscellaneous MSS. I print from _TCC_:
A PARADOX.
Whosoe termes Love a fire, may like a poet
Faine what he will, for certaine cannot showe it.
For Fire nere burnes, but when the fuell's neare
But Love doth at most distance most appeare.
Yet out of fire water did never goe,
But teares from Love abundantly doe flowe.
Fire still mounts upward; but Love oft descendeth.
Fire leaves the midst: Love to the Center tendeth.
Fire dryes and hardens: Love doth mollifie.
Fire doth consume, but Love doth fructifie.
The powerful Queene of Love (faire Venus) came
Descended from the Sea, not from the flame,
Whence passions ebbe and flowe, and from the braine
Run to the hart like streames, and back againe.
Yea Love oft fills mens breasts with melting snow
Drowning their Love-sick minds in flouds of woe.
What is Love, water then? it may be soe;
But hee saith trueth, that saith hee doth not knowe.
FINIS.
PAGE =71=. FAREWELL TO LOVE.
l. 12. _His highnesse &c. _ 'Presumably his highness was made of gilt
gingerbread. ' Chambers. See Jonson, _Bartholomew Fair_, III. i.
ll. 28-30. As these lines stand in the old editions they are
unintelligible:
Because that other curse of being short,
And only for a minute made to be
Eager, desires to raise posterity.
Grosart prints:
Because that other curse of being short
And--only-for-a-minute-made-to-be--
Eager desires to raise posterity.
This and the note which he appends I find more incomprehensible than
the old text. This is his note: 'The whole sense then is: Unless
Nature decreed this in order that man should despise it, (just) as
she made it short, that man might for that reason also despise a
sport that was only for a minute made to be eager desires to raise
posterity. ' Surely this is Abracadabra!
What has happened is, I believe, this: Donne here, as elsewhere, used
an obsolescent word, viz. 'eagers', the verb, meaning 'sharpens'. The
copyist did not recognize the form, took 'desire' for the verb, and
made 'eager' the adjectival complement to 'be', changing 'desire'
to 'desires' as predicate to 'curse'. What Donne had in mind was
the Aristotelian doctrine that the desire to beget children is
an expression of man's craving for immortality. The most natural
function, according to Aristotle, of every living thing which is not
maimed in any way is to beget another living thing like itself, that
so it may partake of what is eternal and divine. This participation
is the goal of all desire, and of all natural activity. But perishable
individuals cannot partake of the immortal and divine by continuous
existence. Nothing that is perishable can continue always one and the
same individual. Each, therefore, participates as best he may, some
more, some less; remaining the same in a way, i. e. in the species, not
in the individual. ' (_De Anima_, B. 4. 415 A-B. ) Donne's argument then
is this: 'Why of all animals have we alone this feeling of depression
and remorse after the act of love? Is it a device of nature to
restrain us from an act which shortens the life of the individual (he
refers here to a prevalent belief as to the deleterious effect of the
act of love), needed because that other curse which Adam brought upon
man, the curse of mortality,
of being short,
And only for a minute made to be,
Eagers [i. e. whets or provokes] desire to raise posterity. '
The latest use of 'eager' as a verb quoted by the O. E. D. is from
Mulcaster's _Positions_ (1581), where the sense is that of imitating
physically: 'They that be gawled . . . may neither runne nor wrastle
for eagering the inward'. The Middle English use is closer to Donne's:
'The nature of som men is so . . . unconvenable that . . . poverte myhte
rather egren hym to don felonies. ' Chaucer, Boëth. _De Consol. Phil. _
In the Burley MS. (seventeenth century) the following epigram on
Bancroft appears:
A learned Bishop of this land
Thinking to make religion stand,
In equall poise on every syde
The mixture of them thus he tryde:
An ounce of protestants he singles
And a dramme of papists mingles,
Then adds a scruple of a puritan
And melts them down in his brayne pan,
But where hee lookes they should digest
The scruple eagers all the rest.
In Harl. MS. 4908 f. 83 the last line reads:
That scruple troubles all the rest.
PAGE =71=. A LECTURE UPON THE SHADOW.
The text of this poem in the editions is that of _A18_, _N_, _TC_
among the MSS. A slightly different recension is found in most of the
other MSS. The chief difference is that the latter read 'love' for
'loves' at ll. 9, 14, and 19. They also, however, read 'least' for
'high'st' at l. 12. In l. 19 they vacillate between 'once' and 'our'.
It would not be difficult to defend either version. The only variation
from the printed text which I have admitted is that on which all the
MSS. are unanimous, viz. 'first' for 'short' in l. 26; 'short' is an
obvious blunder.
NOTE ON THE MUSIC TO WHICH CERTAIN OF DONNE'S SONGS WERE SET.
A song meant for the Elizabethans a poem intended to be sung,
generally to the accompaniment of the lute. Donne had clearly no
thought of his songs being an exception to this rule:
But when I have done so,
Some man his art and voice to show
Doth set and sing my paine.
Yet it is difficult to think of some, perhaps the majority, of Donne's
_Songs and Sonets_ as being written to be sung. Their sonorous and
rhetorical rhythm, the elaborate stanzas which, like the prolonged
periods of the _Elegies_, seem to give us a foretaste of the Miltonic
verse-paragraph, suggest speech,--impassioned, rhythmical speech
rather than the melody of song. We are not haunted by a sense of the
tune to which the song should go, as we are in reading the lyrics of
the Elizabethan Anthologies or of Robert Burns. Yet some of Donne's
songs _were_ set to music. A note in one group of MSS. describes three
of them as 'Songs which were made to certain ayres which were made
before'. One of these is _The Baite_, which must have been set to
the same air as Marlowe's song. I reproduce here a lute-accompaniment
found in William Corkine's _Second Book of Ayres_ (1612). The airs of
the other two (see p. 18) I have not been able to find, nor are they
known to Mr. Barclay Squire, who has kindly helped and guided me in
this matter of the music. With his aid I have reproduced here the
music of two other songs, and, at another place, that of one of
Donne's great _Hymns_.
PAGE =8=. SONG.
The following air is found in Egerton MS. 2013. As given here it has
been conjecturally corrected by Mr. Barclay Squire:
[Music:
Go and catch a falling star
Get with child a mandrake roote,
Tell me where all past times are
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaid's singing
Or to keep of Envy's singing
And find
what wind
Serves to advance an honest mind. ]
PAGE =23=. BREAKE OF DAY.
This is set to the following air in Corkine's _Second Book of Ayres_
(1612). As given here it has been transcribed by Mr. Barclay Squire,
omitting the lute accompaniment:
[Music:
'Tis true 'tis day, What though it be?
And will you there-fore rise from me?
What, will you rise, What, will you rise be-cause 'tis light?
Did we lye downe be-cause 'twas night?
Love that in spight of dark-nesse brought us he-ther,
In spight of light should keepe us still to-ge-ther,
In spight of light should keepe us still to-ge-ther,
In spight of light should keepe us still to-ge-ther. ]
PAGE =46=. THE BAITE.
From Corkine's _Second Book of Ayres_ (1612).
[Music: _Lessons for the Lyra Violl. _
Come liue with me, and be my Loue. ]
EPIGRAMS.
PAGES =75-8=. Of the epigrams sixteen are given in all the editions,
_1633-69_. Of these, thirteen are in _A18_, _N_, _TC_, none in _D_,
_H49_, _Lec_. Of the remaining three, two are in _W_, one in _HN_,
both good authorities. I have added three of interest from _W_, of
which one is in _HN_, and all three are in _O'F_. _W_ includes among
the _Epigrams_ the short poem _On a Jeat Ring Sent_, printed generally
with the _Songs and Sonets_. In _HN_ there is one and in the Burley
MS. are three more. Of these the one in _HN_ and two of those in _Bur_
are merely coarse, and there is no use burdening Donne with more of
this kind than he is already responsible for. The last in _Bur_ runs:
Why are maydes wits than boyes of lower strayne?
Eve was a daughter of the ribb not brayne.
Donne's epigrams were much admired, and some of his elegies were
classed with them as satirical 'evaporations of wit'. Drummond says:
'I think if he would he might easily be the best epigrammatist we
have found in English; of which I have not yet seen any come near
the Ancients. Compare his Marry and Love with Tasso's stanzas against
beauty; one shall hardly know who hath best. ' The stanzas referred to
are entitled _Sopra la bellezza_, and begin:
Questo che tanto il cieco volgo apprezza.
PAGE =75=. PYRAMUS AND THISBE. The Grolier Club edition prints the
first line of this epigram,
Two by themselves each other love and fear,
which suggests that 'love' and 'fear' are verbs. As punctuated in
_1633_ the epigram is condensed but precise: 'These two, slain by
themselves, by each other, by fear, and by love, are joined here in
one tomb, by the friends whose cruel action in parting them brought
them together here. ' Every point in the epigram corresponds to the
incidents of the story as narrated in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, iv.
55-165. The closing line runs:
Quodque rogis superest, una requiescit in urna.
A BURNT SHIP. In _W_ the title is given in Italian, in _O'F_ in
Latin. Compare James's letter to Salisbury on the Dutch demands for
assistance against Spain;--'Should I ruin myself for maintaining
them. . . . I look that by a peace they should enrich themselves to pay
me my debts, and if they be so weak as they cannot subsist, either in
peace or war, without I ruin myself for upholding them, in that case
surely the nearest harm is to be first eschewed: _a man will leap out
of a burning ship and drown himself in the sea_; and it is doubtless
a farther off harm from me to suffer them to fall again into the hands
of Spain, and let God provide for the danger that may with time fall
upon me or my posterity, than presently to starve myself and mine
with putting the meat in their mouth. ' _The King to Salisbury_, 1607,
Hatfield MSS. , quoted in Gardiner's _History of England_, ii. 25.
PAGE =76=. A LAME BEGGER. Compare:
Dull says he is so weake, he cannot rise,
Nor stand, nor goe; if that be true, he lyes.
Finis quoth R.
Thomas Deloney, _Strange Histories of Songes & Sonets of
Kings, Princes, Dukes, Lords, Ladyes, Knights and Gentlemen.
Very pleasant either to be read or songe, &c. _, 1607.
