Of all Donne's poems these are the most difficult to date with any
definiteness. Jonson, Drummond notes, 'affirmeth Done to have written
all his best pieces ere he was twenty-five years old,' that would be
before 1598, the year in which Donne became secretary to Sir Thomas
Egerton. This harmonizes fairly well with such indications of date as
are discoverable in the _Elegies_, poems similar in theme and tone
to the _Songs and Sonets_. Mr. Chambers pushes the more daring and
cynical of these poems in both these groups further back. He says,
'All Donne's Love-poems ... seem to me to fall into two divisions.
There is one, marked by cynicism, ethical laxity and a somewhat
deliberate profession of inconstancy. This I believe to be his
earliest style, and ascribe the poems marked by it to the period
before 1596. About that date he became acquainted with Anne More, whom
he evidently loved devotedly and sincerely ever after. And therefore
from 1596 onwards I place the second division, with its emphasis of
the spiritual, and deep insight into the real things of love.' This is
a little too early. Anne More was only twelve years old in 1596, and
it is unlikely that she and Donne were known to each other before
1598. Their affection probably ripened later. It almost seems from
Donne's letters to his friends as though about 1599 he was proffering
at least courtly adoration to some other lady.
Moreover, it is to conceive somewhat inadequately of Donne's complex
nature to make too sharp a temporal division between his gayer, more
cynical effusions and his graver, even religious pieces. The truth
about Donne is well stated by Professor Norton: 'Donne's "better
angel" and his "worser spirit" seem to have kept up a continual
contest, now the one, now the other, gaining the mastery in his