I have transferred this poem hither from its place in _1635-69_ among
the sober _Letters to Severall Personages_. It has obviously a closer
relation to the Elegies, and must have been composed about the same
time. Its genus is the Heroical Epistle modelled on Ovid, of which
Drayton produced the most popular English imitations in 1597. Donne's
was possibly evoked by these and written in 1597-8, but there is no
means of dating it exactly. 'Passionating' and 'conceited' eloquence
is the quality of these poems modelled on Ovid, and whatever one may
think of the poem on moral grounds it is impossible to deny that Donne
has caught the tone of the kind, and written a poem passionate and
eloquent in its own not altogether admirable way. The reader is more
than once reminded of Mr. Swinburne's far less conceited but more
diffuse _Anactoria_.
l. 22. _As Down, as Stars, &c._ 'Down' is probably correct, but the
'Dowves' (i.e. doves) of _P_ gives the plural as in the other
nouns, and a closer parallel in poetic vividness. We get a series of
pictures--doves, stars, cedars, lilies. The meaning conveyed would be
the same:
this hand
As soft as doves-downe, and as white as it.
_Wint. Tale_, IV. iv. 374.
But of course swan's down is also celebrated:
Heaven with sweet repose doth crowne
Each vertue softer than the swan's fam'd downe.
Habington, _Castara_.
PAGE =125=, l. 33. Modern editors separate 'thorny' and 'hairy' by a
comma. They should rather be connected by a hyphen as in _TCD_.
l. 40. _And are, as theeves trac'd, which rob when it snows._ This is
doubtless the source of Dryden's figurative description of Jonson's
thefts from the Ancients: 'You track him everywhere in their snow.'
_Essay of Dramatic Poesy_.