l. 10. _labour'st._ The form with 't' occurs in most of the MSS., and
't' is restored in _1635_. The 'labours' of _1633_ represents a
common dropping of the 't' for ease of pronunciation. See Franz,
_Shakespeare-Grammatik_, § 152. It is colloquial, and I doubt if Donne
would have preserved it if he had printed the poem, supposing that he
wrote the word so, and not some copyist.
ll. 21-4. _You goe to friends, whose love and meanes present
Various content
To your eyes, eares, and tongue, and every part:
If then your body goe, what need you a heart?_
I have adopted the MS. readings 'tongue' and 'what need you a heart?'
because they seem to me more certainly what Donne wrote. He may have
altered them, but so may an editor. 'Tongue' is more exactly parallel
to eyes and ears, and the whole talk is of organs. 'What need you a
heart?' is more pointed. 'With these organs of sense, what need have
you of a heart?' The idiom was not uncommon, the verb being used
impersonally. The O.E.D. gives among others:
What need us so many instances abroad.
_Andros Tracts_, 1691.
'What need your heart go' is of course also idiomatic. The latest
example the O.E.D. gives is from Hall's _Satires_, 1597: 'What needs
me care for any bookish skill?'
PAGE =61=. THE PRIMROSE, &c.
It is noteworthy that the addition 'being at Montgomery Castle', &c.
was made in _1635_. It is unknown to _1633_ and the MSS. It may be
unwarranted. If it be accurate, then the poem is probably addressed
to Mrs. Herbert and is a half mystical, half cynical description of
Platonic passion. The perfect primrose has apparently five petals, but
more or less may be found. Seeking for one to symbolize his love, he
fears to find either more or less. What can be less than woman? But if
more than woman she becomes that unreal thing, the object of Platonic
affection and Petrarchian adoration: but, as he says elsewhere,
Love's not so pure and abstract as they use
To say, which have no Mistresse but their Muse.
Let woman be content to be herself. Since five is half ten, united
with man she will be half of a perfect life; or (and the cynical
humour breaks out again) if she is not content with that, since five
is the first number which includes an even number (2) and an odd (3),
it may claim to be the perfect number, and she to be the whole in
which we men are included and absorbed. We have no will of our own.
'From Sarai's name He took a letter which expressed the number ten,
and reposed one which made but five; so that she contributed that
five which man wanted before, to show a mutual indigence and support.'
_Essays in Divinity_ (Jessop, 1855), p. 118.
'Even for this, he will visite to the third, and fourth generation;
and three and foure are seven, and seven is infinite. _Sermons_ 50.
47. 440.
l. 30. _this, five,_ I have introduced a comma after 'this' to show
what, I think, must be the relation of the words. The later editions
drop 'this', and it seems to me probable that an original reading and
a correction have survived side by side. Donne may have written 'this'
alone, referring back to 'five', and then, thinking the reference too
remote, he may have substituted 'five' in the margin, whence it crept
into the text without completely displacing 'this'. The support which
the MSS. lend to _1633_ make it dangerous to remove either word now,
but I have thought it well to show that 'this' _is_ 'five'. In
the MSS. when a word is erased a line is drawn under it and the
substituted word placed in the margin.