Chapter VIII: Part 8

Nash says, speaking of Satan, 'Lucifer (before his fall) an Archangel, was a cleere body, compact of the purest and brightest of the ayre, but after his fall hee was vayled with a grosser substance, and tooke a new forme of darke and thicke ayre, which he still reteyneth.' _Pierce Penniless_ (Grosart), ii. 102. The popular mind had difficulty in appreciating the scholastic doctrine of the purely spiritual nature of angels who do not possess but only assume bodies; who do not occupy any point in space but are _virtually_ present as operating at that point. 'Per applicationem igitur virtutis angelicae ad aliquem locum qualitercumque dicitur Angelus esse in loco corporeo.' The popular mind gave them thin bodies and wondered how many could stand on a needle.

The Scholastic doctrine of Angelic bodies was an inheritance from the Neo-Platonic doctrine of the bodies of demons, the beings intermediary between gods and men. According to Plotinus these could assume a body of air or of fire, but the generally entertained view of the school was, that their bodies were of air. Apuleius was the author of a definition of demons which was transmitted through the Middle Ages: 'Daemones sunt genere animalia, ingenio rationalia, animo passiva, corpore aeria, tempore aeterna.' See also Dante, _Purgatorio_, xv. The aerial or aetherial body is a tenet of mysticism. It has been defended by such different thinkers as Leibnitz and Charles Bonnet. See Bouillet's note to Plotinus's _Enneads_, I. 454.

PAGE =23=. BREAKE OF DAY.

This poem is obviously addressed by a woman to her lover, not _vice versa_, though the fact has eluded some of the copyists, who have tried to change the pronouns. It is strange to find the subtle and erudite Donne in his quest of realism falling into line with the popular song-writer. Mr. Chambers has pointed out in his learned and delightful essay on the mediaeval lyric (_Early English Lyrics_, 1907) that the popular as opposed to the courtly love-song was frequently put into the mouth of the woman. One has only to turn to Burns and the Scotch lyrists to find the same thing true. This song, indeed, is clearly descended from the popular _aube_, or lyric dialogue of lovers parting at daybreak. The dialogue suggestion is heightened by the punctuation of l. 3 in some MSS.

Why should we rise? Because 'tis light?

ll. 13-18. _Must businesse thee from hence remove, &c._ 'It is a good definition of ill-love, that St. Chrysostom gives, that it is _Animae vacantis passio_, a passion of an empty soul, of an idle mind. For fill a man with business, and he hath no room for such love.' _Sermons_ 26. 384.

PAGE =24=. THE ANNIVERSARIE.

l. 3. _The Sun itselfe, which makes times, as they passe_: i.e. which makes times and seasons as they pass.

Before the Sunne, the which fram'd daies, was fram'd.
_The Second Anniversary_, l. 23.

The construction is somewhat of an anacoluthon, the sun alone being given the predicate, 'Is elder by a year,' which has to be supplied with all the other subjects in the first two lines. Chambers, inadvertently or from some copy of _1633_, reads 'time', and this makes 'they' refer back to 'Kings, favourites', &c. This does not improve the construction.

l. 22. _But wee no more, then all the rest._ The 'wee' of every MS. which I have consulted seems to me certainly the correct reading. The 'now' of all the printed editions is due to the editor of _1633_ imagining that he got thereby the right antithesis to 'then'. But he was too hasty, for the antithesis is between 'then' when we are in heaven, and now while we are 'here upon earth'. In heaven indeed we shall be 'throughly blest', but _all_ in heaven are equally happy, whereas here on earth,

we'are kings and none but we
Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be.

The 'none but we' is the extreme antithesis to 'But we no more than all the rest'.

The Scholastic Philosophy held, not indeed that all in heaven are equally blest, but that all are equally content. Basing themselves on the verse, 'In domo Patris mei mansiones multae sunt,' John xiv. 2, they argued that the blessed have in varying degree according to their merit, the essential happiness of Heaven which is the vision of God:

Only who have enjoy'd
The sight of God, in fulnesse, can think it;
For it is both the object and the wit.
This is essential joy, where neither hee
Can suffer diminution, nor wee;
'Tis such a full, and such a filling good;
Had th'Angells once look'd on him they had stood.
_The Second Anniversary_, ll. 140-6 (p. 264).

But though not all equally dowered with the virtue and the wisdom to understand God, all are content, for each is full to his measure, and each is happy in the happiness of the other: 'Solet etiam quaeri an in gaudio dispares sint, sicut in claritate cognitionis differunt. De hoc August. ait in lib. de Civ. Dei: Multae mansiones in una domo erunt, scilicet, variae praemiorum dignitates: sed ubi Deus erit omnia in omnibus, erit etiam in dispari claritate par gaudium; ut quod habebunt singuli, commune sit omnibus, quia etiam gloria capitis omnium erit per vinculum charitatis. Ex his datur intelligi quod par gaudium omnes habebunt, etsi disparem cognitionis claritatem, quia per charitatem quae in singulis erit perfecta, tantum quisque gaudebit de bono alterius, quantum gauderet si in se ipso haberet. Sed si par erit cunctorum gaudium, videtur quod par sit omnium beatitudo; quod constat omnino non esse. Ad quod dici potest quod beatitudo par esset si ita esset par gaudium, ut etiam par esset cognitio; sed quia hoc non erit, non faciet paritas gaudii paritatem beatitudinis. Potest etiam sic accipi par gaudium, ut non referatur paritas ad intensionem affectionis gaudentium, sed ad universitatem rerum de quibus laetabitur: quia de omni re unde gaudebit unus, gaudebunt omnes.' Petri Lombardi ... _Sententiarum_ Lib. IV, Distinct. xlix. 4. Compare Aquinas, _Summa, Supplement._ Quaest. xciii.

All in heaven are perfectly happy in the place assigned to them, is Piccardo's answer to Dante (_Paradiso_, iii. 70-88): 'So that our being thus, from threshold unto threshold throughout the realm, is a joy to all the realm, as to the King, who draweth our wills to what he willeth: and his will is our peace.'

ll. 23-4. The variants in these lines show that _1633_ has in this poem followed not _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ but _A18_, _N_, _TC_.

PAGE =25=. A VALEDICTION: OF MY NAME IN THE WINDOW.

I have adopted from the title of this poem in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ the correct manner of entitling all these poems. In the printed editions the titles run straight on, _A Valediction of my name, in the window_. This has led in the case of the next of these poems, _A Valediction of the booke_, to the mistake expressed in the title of _1633_, _Valediction to his Booke_, and repeated by Grosart, that the latter was a dedication, 'formed the concluding poem of the missing edition of his poems.' This is a complete mistake. _Valediction_ is the general title of a poem bidding farewell. _Of the Booke_, _Of teares_, &c., indicate the particular themes. This is clearly brought out in _O'F_, where they are brought together and numbered. _Valediction 2. of Teares_, &c.

PAGE =26=, l. 28. _The Rafters of my body, bone._ Compare: 'First, _Ossa_, bones, We know in the naturall and ordinary acceptation, what they are; They are these Beames, and Timbers, and Rafters of these Tabernacles, these Temples of the Holy Ghost, these bodies of ours.' _Sermons_ 80. 51. 516.

PAGE =27=, ll. 31-2. _Till my returne, repaire
And recompact my scattered body so._

This verse is rightly printed in the 1633 edition. In that of 1635 it went wrong; and the errors were transmitted through all the subsequent editions, and have been retained by Grosart and Chambers, but corrected in the Grolier Club edition. The full stop after 'so' was changed to a comma on the natural but mistaken assumption that 'so' pointed forward to the immediately following 'as'. In fact, 'so' refers _back_ to the preceding verse. Donne has described how from his anatomy or skeleton, i.e. his name scratched in the glass, the lady may repair and recompact his whole frame, and he opens the new verse by bidding her do so. Compare: 'In this chapter ... we have Job's Anatomy, Jobs Sceleton, the ruins to which he was reduced.... Job felt the hand of destruction upon him, and he felt the hand of preservation too; and it was all one hand: This is God's Method ... even God's demolitions are super-edifications, his Anatomies, his dissections are so many recompactings, so many resurrections; God winds us off the Skein, that he may weave us up into the whole peece, and he cuts us out of the whole peece into peeces, that he may make us up into a whole garment.' _Sermons_ 80. 43. 127-9. Again, 'It is a divorce and no super-induction, it is a separating, and no redintegration.' _Sermons_ 80. 55. 552. With the third line, 'As all the virtuous powers,' Donne begins a new comparison which is completed in the next stanza. Therefore the sixth stanza closes rightly in the 1633 text with a colon. The full stop of the later editions, which Chambers adopts, is obviously wrong. Grosart has a semicolon, but as he retains the comma at 'so' and puts a semicolon at the end of the previous stanza, the sense becomes very obscure.

PAGE =28=. TWICKNAM GARDEN.

l. 1. _surrounded with tears_: i.e. overflowed with tears, the root idea of 'surrounded'. The Dutch poet translates:

Van suchten hytgedort, van tranen overvloeyt.

Compare: 'The traditional doctrines in the Roman Church, which are so many, as that they overflow even the water of life, the Scriptures themselves, and suppresse and surround them.' _Sermons_ 80. 59. 599.

With this whole poem compare: 'Sir, Because I am in a place and season where I see every thing bud forth, I must do so too, and vent some of my meditations to you.... The pleasantnesse of the season displeases me. Everything refreshes, and I wither, and I grow older and not better, my strength diminishes and my load growes, and being to pass more and more stormes, I finde that I have not onely cast out all my ballast, which nature and time gives, Reason and discretion, and so am as empty and light as Vanity can make me, but I have overfraught myself with vice, and so am ridd(l)ingly subject to two contrary wracks, Sinking and Oversetting,' &c. _Letters_ (1651), pp. 78-9 (_To Sir Henry Goodyere_).

l. 15. _Indure, nor yet leave loving._ This is at first sight a strange reading, and I was disposed to think that _1635-69_, which has the support of several MSS. (none of very high textual authority), must be right. It is strange to hear the Petrarchian lover (Donne is probably addressing the Countess of Bedford) speak of 'leaving loving' as though it were in his power. The reading 'nor leave this garden' suits what follows: 'Not to be mocked by the garden and yet to linger here in the vicinity of her I love let me become,' &c.

It is remarkable that _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and _H40_ omit this half line. If the same omission was in the MS. from which _1633_ printed, the present reading might be an editor's emendation. But it is older than that, for it was the reading of the MS. from which the Dutch poet Huyghens translated, and he has tried by his rhymes to produce the effect of the alliteration:

Maer, om my noch te decken
Voor sulcken ongeval, en niet te min de Min
Te voeren in mijn zin,
Komt Min, en laet my hier yet ongevoelicks wezen.

Donne means, I suppose, 'Not to be mocked by the garden, and yet to be ever the faithful lover.' Compare _Loves Deitie_, l. 24. 'Love might make me leave loving.' The remainder of the verse may have been suggested by Jonson's

Slow, slow, fresh Fount, keep time with my salt Tears.

_Cynthias Revels_ (1600).

l. 17. I have ventured to adopt 'groane' for 'grow' ('grone' and 'growe' are almost indistinguishable) from _A18_, _N_, _TC_; _D_, _H49_, _Lec_; and _H40_. It is surely much more in Donne's style than the colourless and pointless 'growe'. It is, too, in closer touch with the next line. If 'growing' is all we are to have predicated of the mandrake, then it should be sufficient for the fountain to 'stand', or 'flow'. The chief difficulty in accepting the MS. reading is that the mandrake is most often said to shriek, sometimes to howl, not to groan:

I prethee yet remember
Millions are now in graves, which at last day
Like mandrakes shall rise shreeking.
Webster, _The White Devil_, V. vi. 64.

On the other hand the lover most often groans:

Thy face hath not the power to make love grone.
Shakespeare, _Sonnets_, 131. 6.

Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groane.
Shakespeare, _Sonnets_, 133. 1.

_Ros._ I would be glad to see it. (_i.e._ _his heart_)

_Bir._ I would you heard it groan.
_Love's Labour's Lost._

In a metaphor where two objects are identified such a transference of attributes is quite permissible. Moreover, although 'shriek' is the more common word, 'groan' is used of the mandrake:

Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan,
I would invent as bitter searching terms, &c.
_2 Hen. VI_, III. ii. 310.

In the _Elegie upon ... Prince Henry_ (p. 269, ll. 53-4) Donne writes:

though such a life wee have
As but so many mandrakes on his grave.

i.e. a life of groans.

PAGE =29=. A VALEDICTION: OF THE BOOKE.

l. 3. _Esloygne._ Chambers alters to 'eloign', but Donne's is a good English form.

From worldly care himself he did esloyne.
Spenser, _F. Q._ I. iv. 20.

The two forms seem to have run parallel from the outset, but that with 's' disappears after the seventeenth century.

PAGE =30=, l. 7. _Her who from Pindar could allure._ Corinna, who five times defeated Pindar at Thebes. Aelian, _Var. Hist._ xiii. 25, referred to by Professor Norton. He quotes also from Pausanias, ix. 22.

l. 8. _And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame._ His wife, Polla Argentaria, who 'assisted her husband in correcting the three first books of his _Pharsalia_'. Lemprière. The source of this tradition I cannot discover. The only reference indicated by Schanz is to Apollinaris Sidonius (Epist. 2, 10, 6, p. 46), who includes her among a list of women who aided and inspired their husbands: 'saepe versum ... complevit ... Argentaria cum Lucano.'

l. 9. _And her, whose booke (they say) Homer did finde, and name._ I owe my understanding of this line to Professor Norton, who refers to the _Myriobiblon_ or _Bibliotheca_ of Photius, of which the first edition was published at Augsburg in 1601. There Photius, in an abstract of a work by Ptolemy Hephaestion of Alexandria, states that Musaeus' daughter Helena wrote on the war of Troy, and that from her work Homer took the subject of his poem. But another account refers to Phantasia of Memphis, the daughter of Nicarchus, whose work Homer got from a sacred scribe named Pharis at Memphis. This last source is mentioned by Lemprière, who knows nothing of the other. Probably, therefore, it is the better known tradition.

ll. 21-2. I have interchanged the old semicolon at the end of l. 21 and the comma at the end of l. 22. I take the first three lines of the stanza to form an absolute clause: 'This book once written, in cipher or new-made idiom, we are thereby (in these letters) the only instruments for Loves clergy--their Missal and Breviary.' I presume this is how it is understood by Chambers and the Grolier Club editor, who place a semicolon at the end of each line. It seems to me that with so heavy a pause after l. 21 a full stop would be better at the end of l. 22.

l. 25. _Vandals and Goths inundate us._ This, the reading of quite a number of independent MSS., seems to me greatly preferable to that of the printed texts:

Vandals and the Goths invade us.

The agreement of the printed texts does not carry much weight, for any examination of the variants in this poem will reveal that they are errors due to misunderstanding, e.g. l. 20, 'tome,' 'to me,' 'tomb' show that each edition has been printed from the last, preserving, or conjecturally amending, its blunders. If therefore the 1633 editor mistook 'inũdate' for 'invade', that is sufficient. Besides the metrical harshness of the line there seems to be no reason why the epithet 'ravenous' should be applied to the Vandals and not extended to the Goths. The metaphor of inundation is used by Donne in the sermons: 'The Torrents, and Inundations, which invasive Armies pour upon Nations, we are fain to call by the name of Law, _The Law of Armes_.' _Sermons_ 26. 3. 36. Milton too uses it:

A multitude like which the populous North
Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, where her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the South, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
_Paradise Lost_, i. 351-4.

Probably both Donne and Milton had in mind Isaiah's description of the Assyrian invasion, where in the Vulgate the word is that used here: 'Propter hoc ecce Dominus adducet super eos aquas fluminis fortes et multas, regem Assyriorum, et omnem gloriam eius; et ascendet super omnes rivos eius, et fluet super universas ripas eius; et ibit per Iudam, _inundans_, et transiens usque ad collum veniet.' Isaiah viii. 7-8.

Donne uses the word exactly as here in the _Essays in Divinity_: 'To which foreign sojourning ... many have assimilated and compared the Roman Church's straying into France and being impounded in Avignon seventy years; and so long also lasted the inundation of the Goths in Italy.' Ed. Jessop (1855), p. 155.

PAGE =31=, ll. 37-54. These verses are somewhat difficult but very characteristic. 'In these our letters, wherein is contained the whole mystery of love, Lawyers will find by what titles we hold our mistresses, what dues we are bound to pay as to feudal superiors. They will find also how, claiming prerogative or privilege they devour or confiscate the estates for which we have paid due service, by transferring what we owe to love, to womankind. The service which we pay expecting love in return, they claim as due to their womanhood, and deserving of no recompense, no return of love. Even when going beyond the strict fee they demand subsidies they will forsake a lover who thinks he has thereby secured them, and will plead "honour" or "conscience".'

'Statesmen will learn here the secret of their art. Love and statesmanship both alike depend upon what we might call the art of "bluffing". Neither will bear too curious examination. The statesman and the lover must impose for the moment, disguising weakness or inspiring fear in those who descry it.'

l. 53. _In this thy booke, such will their nothing see._ After some hesitation I have adopted the 1635-54 reading in preference to that of 1633 and 1669, 'there something.' I do so because (1) the MSS. support it. Their uncertainty as to 'their' and 'there' is of no importance; (2) 'there' is a weak repetition of 'in this thy book', an emphatic enough indication of place; (3) 'their nothing' is both the more difficult reading and the more characteristic of Donne. The art of a statesman is a 'nothing'. He uses the word in the same way of his own Paradoxes and Problems when sending some of them to Sir Henry Wotton, and with the same emphatic stress on the first syllable: 'having this advantage to escape from being called ill things that they are nothings' (An unpublished letter, quoted in the _Cambridge History of Literature_, vol. iv, p. 218). The word was pronounced with a fully rounded 'no'. Compare _Negative Love_, l. 16.

With the sentiment compare: 'And as our Alchymists can finde their whole art and worke of Alchymy, not only in Virgil and Ovid, but in Moses and Solomon; so these men can find such a transmutation into golde, such a foundation of profit, in extorting a sense for Purgatory, or other profitable Doctrines, out of any Scripture.' _Sermons_ 80. 78. 791.

'Un personnage de grande dignité, me voulant approuver par authorité cette queste de la pierre philosophale où il est tout plongé, m'allegua dernièrement cinq ou six passages de la Bible, sur lesquels il disoit s'estre premièrement fondé pour la descharge de sa conscience (car il est de profession ecclesiastique); et, à la verité, l'invention n'en estoit pas seulement plaisante, mais encore bien proprement accommodée à la défence de cette belle science.' Montaigne, _Apologie de Raimond Sebond_ (_Les Essais_, ii. 12).

PAGE =32=, ll. 59-61. _To take a latitude, &c._ The latitude of a spot may always be found by measuring the distance from the zenith of a star whose altitude, i.e. distance from the equator, is known. The words 'At their brightest' are only used to point the antithesis with the 'dark eclipses' used to measure longitude.

ll. 61-3. _but to conclude
Of longitudes, what other way have wee,
But to marke when, and where the dark eclipses bee_.

This method of estimating longitude was, it is said, first discovered by noting that an eclipse which took place during the battle of Arbela was observed at Alexandria an hour later. If the time at which an instantaneous phenomenon such as an eclipse of the moon begins at Greenwich (or whatever be the first meridian) is known, and the time of its beginning at whatever place a ship is be then noted, the difference gives the longitude. The eclipses of the moons in Saturn have been used for the purpose. The method is not, however, a practically useful one. Owing to the penumbra it is difficult to observe the exact moment at which an eclipse of the moon begins. In certain positions of Saturn her satellites are not visible. Another method used was to note the lunar distances of certain stars, but the most common and practical method is by the use of well adjusted and carefully corrected chronometers giving Greenwich time.

The comparison in the last five lines rests on a purely verbal basis. 'Longitude' means literally 'length', 'latitude', 'breadth'. Therefore longitude is compared with the duration of love, 'how long this love will be.' There is no real appropriateness.

PAGE =33=. LOVES GROWTH.

ll. 7-8. _But if this medicine, &c._ 'The quintessence then is a certain matter extracted from all things which Nature has produced, and from everything which has life corporeally in itself, a matter most subtly purged of all impurities and mortality, and separated from all the elements. From this it is evident that the quintessence is, so to say, a nature, a force, a virtue, and a medicine, once shut up within things but now free from any domicile and from all outward incorporation. The same is also the colour, the life, the properties of things.... Now the fact _that this quintessence cures all diseases_ does not arise from temperature, but from an innate property, namely its great cleanliness and purity, by which, after a wonderful manner, it alters the body into its own purity, and entirely changes it.... When therefore the quintessence is separated from that which is not the quintessence, as the soul from its body, and itself is taken into the body, what infirmity is able to withstand this so noble, pure, and powerful nature, or to take away our life save death, which being predestined separates our soul and body, as we teach in our treatise on Life and Death. But by whatsoever method it takes place, the quintessence should not be extracted by the mixture or the addition of incongruous matters; but the element of the quintessence must be extracted from a separated body, and in like manner by that separated body which is extracted.' Paracelsus, _The Fourth Book of the Archidoxies. Concerning the Quintessence_.

The O.E.D. quotes the first sentence of this passage to illustrate its first sense of the word--'the "fifth essence" of ancient and mediaeval philosophy, supposed to be the substance of which the heavenly bodies were composed, and to be actually latent in all things, the extraction of it ... being one of the great objects of Alchemy.' But Paracelsus expressly denies 'that the quintessence exists as a fifth element beyond the other four'; and as he goes on to discuss the different quintessences of different things (each thing having in its constitution the four elements, though one may be predominant) it would seem that he is using the word rather in the second sense given in the O.E.D.--'The most essential part of any substance, extracted by natural or artificial processes.' Probably the two meanings ran into each other. There was a real and an ideal quintessence of things. A specific sense given to the word in older Chemistry is a definite alcoholic tincture obtained by digestion at a gentle heat. This is probably the 'soule of simples' (p. 186, l. 26), unless that also is the quintessence in Paracelsus's full sense of the word.

ll. 17-20. _As, in the firmament,
Starres by the Sunne are not inlarg'd, but showne.
Gentle love deeds, as blossomes on a bough,
From loves awakened root do bud out now_.

_P_ reads here:

As in the firmament
Starres by the sunne are not enlarg'd but showne
Greater; Loves deeds, &c.

This certainly makes the verse clearer. As it stands l. 18 is rather an enigma. The stars are not revealed by the sun, but hidden. Grosart's note is equally enigmatical: 'a curious phrase meaning that the stars that show in daylight are not enlarged, but showne to be brighter than their invisible neighbours, and to be comparatively brighter than they appear to be when all are seen together in the darkness of the night.' _P_ is so carelessly written that an occasional good reading may be an old one because there is no evidence of any editing. The copyist seems to have written on without paying any attention to the sense of what he set down. Still, 'Gentle' is the reading of all the other MSS. and editions, and I do not think it is necessary or desirable to change it. But _P_'s emendation shows what Donne meant. By 'showne' he does not mean 'revealed'--an adjectival predicate 'larger' or 'greater' must be supplied from the verb 'enlarg'd'. 'The stars at sunrise are not really made larger, but they are made to seem larger.' It is a characteristically elliptical and careless wording of a characteristically acute and vivid image. Mr. Wells has used the same phenomenon with effect:

'He peered upwards. "Look!" he said.

"What?" I asked.

"In the sky. Already. On the blackness--a little touch of blue. See! _The stars seem larger._ And the little ones and all those dim nebulosities we saw in empty space--they are hidden."

Swiftly, steadily the day approached us.' _The first Men in the Moon._ (Chap. vii. Sunrise on the Moon.)

A similar phenomenon is noted by Donne: 'A Torch in a misty night, seemeth greater then in a clear.' _Sermons_ 50. 36. 326.

PAGE =34=. LOVES EXCHANGE.

l. 11. _A non obstante_: a privilege, a waiving of any law in favour of an individual: 'Who shall give any other interpretation, any modification, any _Non obstante_ upon his law in my behalf, when he comes to judge me according to that law which himself hath made.' _Sermons_ 50. 12. 97. 'A _Non obstante_ and priviledge to doe a sinne before hand.' Ibid. 50. 35. 313.

l. 14. _minion_: i.e. 'one specially favoured or beloved; a dearest friend' &c. O.E.D. Not used in a contemptuous sense. '_John_ the Minion of _Christ_ upon earth, and survivor of the Apostles, (whose books rather seem fallen from Heaven, and writ with the hand which ingraved the stone Tables, then a mans work)' &c. _Sermons_ 50. 33. 309.

ll. 29 f. Dryden borrows:

Great God of Love, why hast thou made
A Face that can all Hearts command,
That all Religions can invade,
And change the Laws of ev'ry Land?
_A Song to a fair Young Lady Going out of Town in
the Spring._

PAGE =36=. CONFINED LOVE.

Compare with this the poem _Loves Freedome_ in Beaumont's _Poems_ (1652), sig. E. 6:

Why should man be only ty'd
To a foolish Female thing,
When all Creatures else beside,
Birds and Beasts, change every Spring?
Who would then to one be bound,
When so many may be found?

The third verse runs:

Would you think him wise that now
Still one sort of meat doth eat,
When both Sea and Land allow
Sundry sorts of other meat?
Who would then, &c.

Poems on such themes were doubtless exercises of wit at which more than one author tried his hand in rivalry with his fellows.

l. 16. _And not to seeke new lands, or not to deale withall._ I have, after some consideration, adhered to the _1633_ reading. Chambers has adopted that of the later editions, taking the line to mean that a man builds ships in order to seek new lands and to deal or trade with all lands. But ships cannot trade with inland countries. The form 'withal' is the regular one for 'with' when it follows the noun it governs. 'We build ships not to let them lie in harbours but to seek new lands with, and to trade with.' The MS. evidence is not of much assistance, because it is not clear in all cases what 'w^{th} all' stands for. The words were sometimes separated even when the simple preposition was intended. 'People, such as I have dealt with all in their marchaundyse.' Berners' _Froissart_, I. cclxvii. 395 (O.E.D.). But _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ read 'w^{th} All', supporting Chambers.

For the sentiment compare:

A stately builded ship well rig'd and tall
The Ocean maketh more majesticall:
Why vowest thou to live in Sestos here,
Who on Loves seas more glorious would appeare.
Marlowe, _Hero and Leander_: _First Sestiad_ 219-222.

For 'deale withall' compare:

For ye have much adoe to deale withal.
Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, VI. i. 10.

PAGE =37=. THE DREAME.

ll. 1-10. _Deare love, for nothing lesse then thee
Would I have broke this happy dreame,
It was a theame
For reason, much too strong for phantasie,
Therefore thou wak'dst me wisely; yet
My Dreame thou brok'st not, but continued'st it,
Thou art so truth, that thoughts of thee suffice,
To make dreames truths; and fables histories;
Enter these armes, &c._

I have left the punctuation of the first stanza unaltered. The sense is clear and any modernization alters the rhetoric. Chambers places a semicolon after 'dreame' and a full stop after 'phantasie'. The last is certainly wrong, for the statement 'It was a theme', &c. is connected not with what precedes, but with what follows, 'Therefore thou waked'st me wisely.' In like manner Chambers's full stop after 'but continued'st it' breaks the close connexion with the two following lines, which are really an adverbial clause of explanation or reason. 'My dream thou brokest not, but continued'st it,' for 'Thou art so truth', &c. A full stop might more justifiably be placed after 'histories', but the semicolon is more in Donne's manner.

l. 7. _Thou art so truth._ The evidence of the MSS. shows that both 'truth' and 'true' were current versions and explains the alteration of _1635-69_. But 'truth' is both the more difficult reading and the more subtle expression of Donne's thought; 'true' is the obvious emendation of less metaphysical copyists and editors. Donne's 'Love' is not true as opposed to false only; she is 'truth' as opposed to dreams or phantasms or aught that partakes of unreality. She is essentially truth as God is: 'Respondeo dicendum quod ... veritas invenitur in intellectu, secundum quod apprehendit rem ut est; et in re, secundum quod habet esse conformabile intellectui. Hoc autem maxime invenitur in Deo. Nam esse eius non solum est conforme suo intelligere; et suum intelligere est mensura et causa omnis alterius esse, et omnis alterius intellectus; et ipse est suum esse et intelligere. Unde sequitur quod non solum in ipso sit veritas, sed quod ipse sit ipsa summa et prima veritas. _Summa_ I. vi. 5.

To deify the object of your love was a common topic of love-poetry; Donne does so with all the subtleties of scholastic theology at his finger-ends. In this single poem he attributes to the lady addressed two attributes of Deity, (1) the identity of being and essence, (2) the power of reading the thoughts directly.

The Dutch poet keeps this point:

de Waerheyt is so ghy, en
Ghy zijt de Waerheyt so.

ll. 11-12. _As lightning, or a Tapers light
Thine eyes, and not thy noise wak'd mee._

'A sodain light brought into a room doth awaken some men; but yet a noise does it better.' _Sermons_ 50. 38. 344.

'A candle wakes some men as well as a noise.' _Sermons_ 80. 61. 617.

ll. 15-16. _But when I saw thou sawest my heart,
And knew'st my thoughts, beyond an Angels art._

Modern editors, by removing the comma after 'thoughts', have altered the sense of these lines. It is not that she could read his thoughts better than an angel, but that she could read them at all, a power which is not granted to Angels.

St. Thomas (_Summa Theol._ Quaest. lvii. Art. 4) discusses 'Utrum angeli cognoscant cogitationes cordium', and concludes, 'Cognoscunt Angeli cordium cogitationes in suis effectibus: ut autem in se ipsis sunt, Deo tantum sunt naturaliter cognitae.' Angels may read our thoughts by subtler signs than our words and acts, or even those changes of countenance and pulsation which we note in each other, 'quanto subtilius huiusmodi immutationes occultas corporales perpendunt.' But to know them as they are in the intellect and will belongs only to God, to whom only the freedom of the human will is subject, and a man's thoughts are subject to his will. 'Manifestum est autem, quod ex sola voluntate dependet, quod aliquis actu aliqua consideret; quia cum aliquis habet habitum scientiae, vel species intelligibiles in eo existentes, utitur eis cum vult. Et ideo dicit Apostolus I Corinth. secundo: quod _quae sunt hominis, nemo novit nisi spiritus hominis qui in ipso est_.'

Donne recurs to this theme very frequently: 'Let the Schoole dispute infinitely (for he that will not content himself with means of salvation till all Schoole points be reconciled, will come too late); let Scotus and his Heard think, That Angels, and separate souls have a naturall power to understand thoughts ... And let Aquinas present his arguments to the contrary, That those spirits have no naturall power to know thoughts; we seek no farther, but that Jesus Christ himself thought it argument enough to convince the Scribes and Pharisees, and prove himself God, by knowing their thoughts. _Eadem Maiestate et potentia_ sayes _S. Hierome_, Since you see I proceed as God, in knowing your thoughts, why beleeve you not that I may forgive his sins as God too?' _Sermons_ 80. 11. 111; and compare also _Sermons_ 80. 9. 92.

This point is also preserved in the Dutch version:

Maer als ick u sagh sien wat om mijn hertje lagh
En weten wat ick docht (dat Engel noyt en sagh).

M. Legouis in a recent French version has left it ambiguous:

Mais quand j'ai vu que tu voyais mon coeur
Et savais mes pensées au dela du savoir d'un ange.

The MS. reading, 14 'but an Angel', heightens the antithesis.

ll. 27-8. _Perchance as torches which must ready bee
Men light and put out._

'If it' (i.e. a torch) 'have _never_ been _lighted_, it does not easily take light, but it must be _bruised_ and _beaten_ first; if it have been lighted and put out, though it cannot take fire _of it self_, yet it does easily conceive fire, if it be presented within any convenient distance.' _Sermons_ 50. 36. 332.

PAGE =38=. A VALEDICTION: OF WEEPING.

ll. 1-9. I have changed the comma at l. 6 to a semicolon, as the first image, that of the coins, closes here. Chambers places a full stop at l. 4 'worth', and apparently connects the next two lines with what follows--wrongly, I think. Finishing the figure of the coins, coined, stamped, and given their value by her, Donne passes on to a couple of new images. 'The tears are fruits of much grief; but they are symbols of more to come. For, as your image perishes in each tear that falls, so shall we perish, be nothing, when between us rolls the "salt, estranging sea".'

It is, I suppose, by an inadvertence that Chambers has left 'divers' unchanged to 'diverse'. I cannot think there is any reference to 'a diver in the pearly seas'. Grolier and the Dutch poet divide as here:

Laet voor uw aengesicht mijn trouwe tranen vallen,
Want van dat aengensicht ontfangen sy uw' munt,
En rijsen tot de waerd dies' uwe stempel gunt
Bevrucht van uw' gedaent: vrucht van veel' ongevallen,
Maer teekenen van meer, daer ghy valt met den traen,
Die van u swanger was, en beyde wy ontdaen
Verdwijnen, soo wy op verscheiden oever staen.

PAGE =39=. LOVES ALCHYMIE.

l. 7. _th'Elixar_: i.e. 'the Elixir Vitae', which heals all disease and indefinitely prolongs life. It is sometimes identified with the philosopher's stone, which transmutes metals to gold. In speaking of quintessences (see note, II. p. 30) Paracelsus declares that there are certain quintessences superior to those of gold, marchasite, precious stones, &c., 'of more importance than that they should be called a quintessence. It should be rather spoken of as a certain secret and mystery ... Among these arcana we here put forward four. Of these arcana the first is the mercury of life, the second is the primal matter, the third is the Philosopher's Stone, and the fourth the tincture. But although these arcana are rather angelical than human to speak of we shall not shrink from them.' From the description he gives they all seem to operate more or less alike, purging metals and other bodies from disease.

ll. 7-10. _And as no chymique yet, &c._ 'My Lord Chancellor gave me so noble and so ready a dispatch, accompanied with so fatherly advice that I am now, like an alchemist, delighted with discoveries by the way, though I attain not mine end.' To ... Sir H. G., Gosse's _Life, &c._, ii. 49.

ll. 23-4. _at their best
Sweetnesse and wit, they'are but Mummy, possest._

The punctuation of these lines in _1633-54_ is ambiguous, and Chambers has altered it wrongly to

Sweetness and wit they are, but Mummy possest.

The MSS. generally support the punctuation which I have adopted, which is that of the Grolier Club edition.

PAGE =40=. THE FLEA.

I have restored this poem to the place it occupied in _1633_. In _1635_ it was placed first of all the _Songs and Sonets_. A strange choice to our mind, but apparently the poem was greatly admired as a masterpiece of wit. It is the first of the pieces translated by Huyghens:

De Vloy.

Slaet acht op deze Vloy, en leert wat overleggen,
Hoe slechten ding het is dat ghy my kont ontzeggen, &c.,

and was selected for special commendation by some of his correspondents. Coleridge comments upon it in verse:

Be proud as Spaniards. Leap for pride, ye Fleas!
In natures _minim_ realm ye're now grandees.
Skip-jacks no more, nor civiller skip-johns;
Thrice-honored Fleas! I greet you all as _Dons_.
In Phoebus' archives registered are ye,
And this your patent of nobility.

It will be noticed that there are two versions of Donne's poem.

PAGE =41=. THE CURSE.

l. 3. _His only, and only his purse._ This, the reading of all the editions except the last, and of the MSS., is obviously right. What is to dispose 'some dull heart to love' is his _only_ purse and _his_ alone, no one's but his purse. Chambers adopts the _1669_ conjecture, 'Him only for his purse,' but in that case there is no subject to 'may dispose', or if 'some dull heart' be subject then 'itself' must be supplied--a harsh construction. 'Dispose' is not used intransitively in this sense.

l. 27. _Mynes._ I have adopted the plural from the MSS. It brings it into line with the other objects mentioned.

PAGE =43=. THE MESSAGE.

l. 11. _But if it be taught by thine._ It seems incredible that Donne should have written 'which if it' &c. immediately after the 'which' of the preceding line. I had thought that the _1633_ printer had accidentally repeated from the line above, but the evidence of the MSS. points to the mistake (if it is a mistake) being older than that. 'Which' was in the MS. used by the printer. If 'But' is not Donne's own reading or emendation it ought to be, and I am loath to injure a charming poem by pedantic adherence to authority in so small a point. _De minimis non curat lex_; but art cares very much indeed. _JC_ and _P_ read 'Yet since it hath learn'd by thine'.

ll. 14 f. _And crosse both
Word and oath, &c._

The 'crosse' of all the MSS. is pretty certainly what Donne wrote. An editor would change to 'break' hardly the other way. To 'crosse' is, of course, to 'cancel'. Compare Jonson's _Poetaster_, Act II, Scene i:

Faith, sir, your mercer's Book
Will tell you with more patience, then I can
(For I am crost, and so's not that I thinke.)

and

Examine well thy beauty with my truth,
And cross my cares, ere greater sums arise.
Daniel, _Delia_, i.

PAGE =44=. A NOCTURNALL, &c.

l. 12. _For I am every dead thing._ I have not thought it right to alter the _1633_ 'every' to the 'very' of _1635-69_. 'Every' has some MS. support, and it is the more difficult reading, though of course 'a very' might easily enough be misread. But I rather think that 'every' expresses what Donne means. He is 'every dead thing' because he is the quintessence of all negations--'absence, darkness, death: things which are not', and more than that, 'the first nothing.'

ll. 14-18. _For his art did expresse ... things which are not._ This is a difficult stanza in a difficult poem. I have after considerable hesitation adopted the punctuation of _1719_, which is followed by all the modern editors. This makes 'dull privations' and 'lean emptinesse' expansions of 'nothingnesse'. This is the simpler construction. I am not sure, however, that the punctuation of the earlier editions and of the MSS. may not be correct. In that case 'From dull privations' goes with 'he ruined me'. Milton speaks of 'ruining from Heaven'. 'From me, who was nothing', says Donne, 'Love extracted the very quintessence of nothingness--made me more nothing than I already was. My state was already one of "dull privation" and "lean emptiness", and Love reduced it still further, making me once more the non-entity I was before I was created.' Only Donne could be guilty of such refined and extravagant subtlety. But probably this is to refine too much. There is no example of 'ruining' as an active verb used in this fashion. A feature of the MS. collection from which this poem was probably printed is the omission of stops at the end of the line. In the next verse Donne pushes the annihilation further. Made nothing by Love, by the death of her he loves he is made the elixir (i.e. the quintessence) not now of ordinary nothing, but of 'the first nothing', the nothing which preceded God's first act of creation. The poem turns upon the thought of degrees in nothingness.

For 'elixir' as identical with 'quintessence' see Oxf. Eng. Dict., _Elixir_, † iii. b, and the quotation there, 'A distill'd quintessence, a pure elixar of mischief, pestilent alike to all.' Milton, _Church Govt._

Of the 'first Nothing' Donne speaks in the _Essays in Divinity_ (Jessop, 1855), pp. 80-1, but in a rather different strain: 'To speak truth freely there was no such Nothing as this' (the nothing which a man might wish to be) 'before the beginning: for he that hath refined all the old definitions hath put this ingredient _Creabile_ (which cannot be absolutely nothing) into his definition of creation; and that Nothing which was, we cannot desire; for man's will is not larger than God's power: and since Nothing was not a pre-existent matter, nor mother of this all, but only a limitation when any thing began to be; how impossible it is to return to that first point of time, since God (if it imply contradiction) cannot reduce yesterday? Of this we will say no more; for this Nothing being no creature; is more incomprehensible than all the rest.'

ll. 31-2. The Grolier Club edition reads:

I should prefer
If I were any beast; some end, some means;

which is to me unintelligible. 'If I were a beast, I should prefer some end, some means' refers to the Aristotelian and Schools doctrine of the soul. The soul of man is rational and self-conscious; of beasts perceptive and moving, therefore able to select ends and means; the vegetative soul of plants selects what it can feed on and rejects what it cannot, and so far detests and loves. Even stones, which have no souls, attract and repel. But even of stones Donne says: 'We are not sure that stones have not life; stones may have life; neither (to speak humanely) is it unreasonably thought by them, that thought the whole world to be inanimated by one soule, and to be one intire living creature; and in that respect does S. Augustine prefer a fly before the Sun, because a fly hath life, and the Sun hath not.' _Sermons_ 80. 7. 69-70.

l. 35. _If I an ordinary nothing were._ 'A shadow is nothing, yet, if the rising or falling sun shines out and there be no shadow, I will pronounce there is no body in that place neither. Ceremonies are nothing; but where there are no ceremonies, order, and obedience, and at last (and quickly) religion itself will vanish.' _Sermons_ (quoted in _Selections from Donne_, 1840).

l. 41. _Enjoy your summer all_; This is Grosart's punctuation. The old editions have a comma. Chambers, obviously quite wrongly, retains the comma, and closes the sentence in the next line. The clause 'Since she enjoys her long night's festival' explains 43 'Let me prepare towards her', &c., _not_ 41 'Enjoy your summer all'.

PAGE =47=. THE APPARITION.

ll. 1-13. The Grolier Club editor places a full stop, Chambers a colon, after 'shrinke', for the comma of the old editions. Chambers's division is better than the first, which interrupts the steady run of the thought to the climax,

A verier ghost than I.

The original punctuation preserves the rapid, crowded march of the clauses.

l. 10. This line throws light on the character of the _1669_ text. The correct reading of _1633_ was spoiled in _1635_ by accidentally dropping 'will', and this error continued through _1639-54_. The 1669 editor, detecting the metrical fault, made the line decasyllabic by interpolating 'a' and 'even'.

PAGE =48=. THE BROKEN HEART.

l. 8. _A flaske of powder burne a day._ The 'flash' of later editions is probably a conjectural emendation, for 'flaske' (_1633_ and many MSS.) makes good sense; and the metaphor of a burning flask of powder seems to suit exactly the later lines which describe what happened to the heart which love inflamed

but Love, alas,
At one first blow did shiver it as glasse.

Shakespeare uses the same simile in a different connexion:

Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,
Mis-shapen in the conduct of them both:
Like powder in a skilless soldiers flaske,
Is set a fire by thine own ignorance,
And thou dismembred with thine owne defence.
_Romeo and Juliet_, III. iii. 130.

l. 14. _and never chawes_: 'chaw' is the form Donne generally uses: 'Implicite beleevers, ignorant beleevers, the adversary may swallow; but the understanding beleever, he must chaw, and pick bones, before he come to assimilate him, and make him like himself.' _Sermons_ 80. 18. 178.

PAGE =49=. A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING MOURNING.

This poem is quoted by Walton after his account of the vision which Donne had of his wife in France, in 1612: 'I forbear the readers farther trouble as to the relation and what concerns it, and will conclude mine with commending to his view a copy of verses given by Mr. Donne to his wife at the time that he then parted from her: and I beg leave to tell, that I have heard some critics, learned both in languages and poetry, say, that none of the Greek or Latin poets did ever equal them.' The critics probably included Wotton,--perhaps also Hales, whose criticism of Shakespeare shows the same readiness to find our own poets as good as the Ancients.

The song, 'Sweetest love I do not go,' was probably written at the same time. It is almost identical in tone. They are certainly the tenderest of Donne's love poems, perhaps the only ones to which the epithet 'tender' can be applied. The _Valediction: of weeping_ is more passionate.

An early translation of this poem into Greek verse is found in a volume in the Bodleian Library.

ll. 9-12. _Moving of th'earth, &c._ 'The "trepidation" was the precession of the equinoxes, supposed, according to the Ptolemaic astronomy, to be caused by the movements of the Ninth or Crystalline Sphere.' Chambers.

First you see fixt in this huge mirrour blew,
Of trembling lights, a number numberlesse:
Fixt they are nam'd, but with a name untrue,
For they all moove and in a Daunce expresse
That great long yeare, that doth contain no lesse
Then threescore hundreds of those yeares in all,
Which the sunne makes with his course naturall.

What if to you those sparks disordered seem
As if by chaunce they had beene scattered there?
The gods a solemne measure doe it deeme,
And see a iust proportion every where,
And know the points whence first their movings were;
To which first points when all returne againe,
The axel-tree of Heav'n shall breake in twain.
Sir John Davies, _Orchestra_, 35-6.

l. 16. _Those things which elemented it._ Chambers follows _1669_ and reads 'The thing'--wrongly, I think. 'Elemented' is just 'composed', and the things are enumerated later, 20. 'eyes, lips, hands.' Compare:

But neither chance nor compliment
Did element our love.
Katharine Phillips (Orinda), _To Mrs. M. A. at parting_.

This and the fellow poem _Upon Absence_ may be compared with Donne's poems on the same theme. See Saintsbury's _Caroline Poets_, i, pp. 548, 550.

l. 20. _and hands_: 'and' has the support of _all_ the MSS. The want of it is no great loss, for though without it the line moves a little irregularly, 'and hands' is not a pleasant concatenation.

ll. 25-36. _If they be two, &c._ Donne's famous simile has a close parallel in Omar Khayyam. Whether Donne's 'hydroptic immoderate thirst of humane learning and languages' extended to Persian I do not know. Captain Harris has supplied me with translations and reference:

In these twin compasses, O Love, you see
One body with two heads, like you and me,
Which wander round one centre, circle wise,
But at the last in one same point agree.
Whinfield's edition of _Omar Khayyam_ (Kegan Paul,
Trübner, 1901, Oriental Series, p. 216).

'Oh my soul, you and I are like a compass. We form but one body having two points. Truly one point moves from the other point, and makes the round of the circle; but the day draws near when the two points must re-unite.' J. H. M^{c}Carthy (D. Nutt, 1898).

PAGE =51=. THE EXTASIE.

This is one of the most important of the lyrics as a statement of Donne's metaphysic of love, of the interconnexion and mutual dependence of body and soul. It is printed in _1633_ from _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ or a MS. resembling it, and from this and the other MSS. I have introduced some alterations in the text: and two rather vital emendations, ll. 55 and 59. _The Extasie_ is probably the source of Lord Herbert of Cherbury's best known poem, _An Ode Upon a Question Moved Whether Love Should Continue For Ever_. Compare with the opening lines of Donne's poem:

They stay'd at last and on the grass
Reposed so, as o're his breast
She bowed her gracious head to rest,
Such a weight as no burden was.

While over eithers compass'd waist
Their folded arms were so compos'd
As if in straightest bonds inclos'd
They suffer'd for joys they did taste

Long their fixt eyes to Heaven bent,
Unchanged they did never move,
As if so great and pure a love
No glass but it could represent.