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'.