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.