l. 5. _My body raigne._ Grosart and Chambers substitute 'range', from
_1635-69_. Perhaps they are right; but I feel doubtful. All the best
MSS. read 'raigne.' Donne contrasts the reign of love and the reign of
lust on the body, and frankly declares for the latter. A lover might
range, 'I can love both fair and brown,' but no lover could
mistake by the way
The maid, and tell the lady of that delay.
Adonis, with graver rhetoric, states the other side of Donne's
paradoxical thesis:
Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.
Shakespeare, _Venus and Adonis_, v. cxxxiv.
ll. 13-16. Chambers and Grosart have adopted, with some modification
of punctuation, the reading of the 1633-54 editions, and the lines are
frequently quoted as printed by Chambers:
Only let me love none; no, not the sport
From country-grass to confitures of court,
Or city's quelque-choses; let not report
My mind transport.
I confess I find it difficult to attach any exact meaning to them.
Are there any instances of 'sport' thus used apparently for 'sportive
lady'? The difficulty seems to me to have arisen from the accidental
dropping in the 1633 edition of the semicolon after 'sport', which the
1669 editor rightly restored. What Donne means by 'the sport' is clear
enough from other passages, e.g. 'the short scorn of a bridegroom's
play' (_Loves Alchimie_), 'as she would man should despise the sport'
(_Farewell to Love_). The prayer that report _may_ ('let', not 'let
not') carry his roving fancy from one to another, is in keeping
with the whole tenor of the poem. The Grolier Club edition has the
punctuation I have given, which I had adopted before I saw that
edition. I find it difficult to attach any meaning to 'let not
report'.