For the date, &c., of this poem, see the introductory note on the
_Elegies_.
The text of _1633_ diverges in some points from that of all the MSS.,
in some others it agrees with _D_, _H49_, _Lec_. In the latter case I
have retained it, but where _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ agree with the rest of
the MSS. I have corrected _1633_, e.g.:
PAGE =93=, l. 6. _Affection here takes Reverences name_: where
'Affection' seems more appropriate than 'Affections'; and l. 8. _But
now shee's gold_: where 'They are gold' of _1633_ involves a very
loose use of 'they'. Possibly _1633_ here gives a first version
afterwards corrected.
ll. 29-32. _Xerxes strange Lydian love, &c._ Herodotus (vii. 31) tells
how Xerxes, on his march to Greece, found in Lydia a plane-tree which
for its beauty ([Greek: kalleos heineka]) he decked with gold
ornaments, and entrusted to a guardian. Aelian, _Variae Historiae_,
ii. 14, _De platano Xerxe amato_, attributes his admiration to its
size: [Greek: en Lydia goun, phasin, idôn phyton eumegethes platanou,]
&c. In the Latin translation in Hercler's edition (Firmin Didot, 1858)
size is taken as equivalent to height, 'quum vidisset proceram
platanum,' but the reference is more probably to extent. Pliny, _N.
H._ 12. 1-3, has much to say of the size of certain planes under which
companies of men camped and slept.
The quotation from Aelian confirms the _1633_ reading, 'none being so
large as shee,' which indeed is confirmed by the lines that follow.
The question of age is left open. The reference to' barrennesse' I do
not understand.
PAGE =94=, l. 47. _naturall lation._ This, the reading of the
great majority of the MSS., is obviously correct and explains the
vacillation of the editions. The word was rare but quite good. The
O.E.D. quotes: 'I mean lation or Local-motion from one place to
another.' Fotherby (1619);
Make me the straight and oblique lines,
The motions, lations, and the signs.
(Herrick, _Hesper._ 64);
and other examples as late as 1690. The term was specially
astronomical, as here. The 'motion natural' of _1633_ is an unusual
order in Donne; the 'natural station' of _1635-69_ is the opposite
of motion. The first was doubtless an intentional alteration by the
editor, which the printer took in at the wrong place; the second a
misreading of 'lation'.