l. 5. 'debt' for 'doubt'.
l. 7. '_nothings_' for '_nothing_'.
l. 20. 'or all It; You.' for 'or all, in you.' There is not much
to choose between the two, but 'the world's best all' is not a very
logical expression. But the _1633_ reading may mean 'the world's
best part, or the world's all,--you.' The alteration of _1635_ is not
necessary, but looks to me like the author's own emendation.
l. 4. _Then worst of civill vices, thanklessenesse._ 'Naturall and
morall men are better acquainted with the duty of gratitude, of
thankesgiving, before they come to the Scriptures, then they are
with the other duty of repentance which belongs to Prayer; for in all
_Solomons_ bookes, you shall not finde halfe so much of the duty of
thankefulnesse, as you shall in _Seneca_ and in _Plutarch_. No book of
Ethicks, of moral doctrine, is come to us, where there is not, almost
in every leafe, some detestation, some Anathema against ingratitude.'
_Sermons_ 80. 55. 550.
PAGE =197=, l. 54. _Wee (but no forraine tyrants could) remove._
Following the hint of _O'F_, I have bracketed all these words to show
that the verb to 'Wee' is 'remove', not 'could remove'.
ll. 57-8. _For, bodies shall from death redeemed bee,
Soules but preserved, not naturally free._
Here the later editions change 'not' to 'borne', and the correction
has been accepted by Grosart and Chambers. But _1633_ is right. If
'not' be changed, the force of the antithesis is lost. What is 'borne
free' does not need to be preserved. What Donne expresses is a form
of the doctrine of conditional immortality. In a sermon on the
Penitential Psalms (_Sermons_ 80. 53. 532) he says: 'We have a full
cleerenesse of the state of the soule after this life, not only above
those of the old Law, but above those of the Primitive Christian
Church, which, in some hundreds of years, came not to a cleere
understanding in that point, whether the soule were immortall by
nature, or but by preservation, whether the soule could not die
or only should not die,' &c. Here the antithesis between 'being
preserved' and 'being naturally free' (i.e. immortal) is presented as
sharply as in this line of the verse _Letter_. But Donne states
the doctrine tentatively 'because that perchance may be without any
constant cleerenesse yet'. Elsewhere he seems to accept it: 'And for
the Immortality of the Soule, it is safelier said to be immortall by
preservation, then immortal, by nature; That God keepes it from dying,
then, that it cannot dye.' _Sermons_ 80. 27. 269. This makes the
correct reading of the line quite certain.
The tenor of Donne's thought seems to me to be as follows: He is
speaking of the soul's eclipse by the body (ll. 40-2), by the body
which should itself be an organ of the soul's life, of prayer as well
as labour (ll. 43-8). He returns in ll. 49-52 to the main theme of the
body's corrupting influence, and this leads him to a new thought. It
is not only the soul which suffers by this absorption in the body, but
the body itself:
What hate could hurt our bodies like our love?
By this descent of the soul into the body we deprive the latter of
its proper dignity, to be the Casket, Temple, Palace of the Soul.
Then Donne turns aside to enforce the dignity of the Body. It will be
redeemed from death, and the Soul is only preserved. No more than
the Body is the Soul naturally immortal. These lines are almost
a parenthesis. The poet returns once more to his main theme, the
degradation of the soul by our exclusive regard for the body.
Thus the deepest thought of Donne's poetry, his love poetry and
his religious poetry, emerges here again. He will not accept the
antithesis between soul and body. The dignity of the body is hardly
less than that of the soul. But we cannot exalt the body at the
expense of the soul. If we immerse the soul in the body it is not the
soul alone which suffers but the body also. In the highest spiritual
life, as in the fullest and most perfect love, body and soul are
complementary, are merged in each other; and after death the life
of the soul is in some measure incomplete, the end for which it was
created is not obtained until it is reunited to the body. 'Yet have
not those Fathers, nor those Expositors, who have in this text,
acknowledged a Resurrection of the soule, mistaken nor miscalled the
matter. Take _Damascens_ owne definition of Resurrection: _Resurrectio
est ejus quod cecidit secunda surrectio_: A Resurrection is a second
rising to that state, from which anything is formerly fallen. Now
though by death, the soule do not fall into any such state, as that it
can complaine, (for what can that lack, which God fils?) yet by death,
the soule fals from that, for which it was infused, and poured into
man at first; that is to be the forme of that body, the King of that
Kingdome; and therefore, when in the generall Resurrection, the soule
returns to that state, for which it was created, and to which it hath
had an affection, and a desire, even in the fulnesse of the Joyes of
Heaven, then, when the soule returns to her office, to make up
the man, because the whole man hath, therefore the soule hath a
Resurrection: not from death, but from a deprivation of her former
state; that state which she was made for, and is ever enclined to.'
_Sermons_ 80. 19. 189.
Here, as before, Donne is probably following St. Augustine, who
combats the Neo-Platonic view (to which mediaeval thought tended to
recur) that a direct source of evil was the descent of the soul into
the body. The body is not essentially evil. It is not the body as such
that weighs down the soul (aggravat animam), but the body corrupted
by sin: 'Nam corruptio corporis ... non peccati primi est causa, sed
poena; nec caro corruptibilis animam peccatricem, sed anima peccatrix
fecit esse corruptibilem carnem.' In the Resurrection we desire not
to escape from the body but to be clothed with a new body,--'nolumus
corpore exspoliari, sed ejus immortalitate vestiri.' Aug. _De Civ.
Dei_, xiv. 3, 5. He cites St. Paul, 2 Cor. v. 1-4.
l. 59. _As men to our prisons, new soules to us are sent, &c._: 'new'
is the reading of _1633_ only, 'now' followed or preceded by a comma
of the other editions and the MSS. It is difficult to decide between
them, but Donne speaks of 'new souls' elsewhere: 'The Father creates
new souls every day in the inanimation of Children, and the Sonne
creates them with him.' _Sermons_ 50. 12. 100. 'Our nature is
Meteorique, we respect (because we partake so) both earth and heaven;
for as our bodies glorified shall be capable of spirituall joy, so
our souls demerged into those bodies, are allowed to partake earthly
pleasure. Our soul is not sent hither, only to go back again; we have
some errand to do here; nor is it sent into prison, because it comes
innocent; and he which sent it, is just.' _Letters_ (1651), p. 46.
l. 68. _Two new starres._ See Introductory Note to _Letters_.
PAGE =198=, l. 72. _Stand on two truths_: i.e. the wickedness of the
world and your goodness. You will believe neither.
PAGE =198=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF BEDFORD.
ON NEW-YEARES DAY.
l. 3. _of stuffe and forme perplext_: i.e. whose matter and form are a
perplexed, intricate, difficult question:
Whose _what_, and _where_ in disputation is.
Donne cannot mean that the matter and form are 'intricately
intertwined or intermingled', using the words as in Bacon: 'The
formes of substances (as they are now by compounding and transplanting
multiplied) are so perplexed.' Bacon, _Adv. Learn._ ii. 7. § 5. The
question of meteors in all their forms was one of great interest and
great difficulty to ancient science. Seneca, who gathers up most of
what has been said before him, recurs to the subject again and again.
See the _Quaestiones Naturales_, i. 1, and elsewhere. Aristotle, he
says, attributes them to exhalations from the earth heated by the
sun's rays. They are at any rate not falling stars, or parts of stars,
but 'have their origin below the stars, and--being without solid
foundation or fixed abode--quickly perish'. But there was great
uncertainty as to their _what_ and _where_. Donne compares himself to
them in the uncertainty of his position and worldly affairs. 'Wind is
a mixt Meteor, to the making whereof divers occasions concurre with
exhalations.' _Sermons_ 80. 31. 305.
PAGE =199=, l. 19. _cherish, us doe wast._ The punctuation of _1633_
is odd at the first glance, but accurate. If with all the later
editions one prints 'cherish us, doe wast', the suggestion is that
'wast' is intransitive--'in cherishing us they waste themselves,'
which is not Donne's meaning. It is us they waste.
PAGE =200=, l. 44. _Some pitty._ I was tempted to think that Lowell's
conjecture of 'piety' for 'pitty' must be right, the more so that the
spelling of the two words was not always differentiated. But it is
improbable that Donne would say that 'piety' in the sense of piety
to God could ever be out of place. What he means is probably that at
Court pity, which elsewhere is a virtue, may not be so if it induces a
lady to lend a relenting ear to the complaint of a lover.
Beware faire maides of musky courtiers oathes
Take heed what giftes and favors you receive,
. . . . . . . . .
Beleeve not oathes or much protesting men,
Credit no vowes nor no bewayling songs.
Joshua Sylvester (_attributed to_ Donne).
What follows is ambiguous. As punctuated in _1633_ the lines run:
some vaine disport,
On this side, sinne: with that place may comport.
This must mean, practically repeating what has been said: 'Some vain
amusements which, on this side of the line separating the cloister
from the Court, would be sin; are on that side, in the Court,
becoming--amusements, sinful in the cloister, are permissible at
Court.' The last line thus contains a sharp antithesis. But can 'on
this side' mean 'in the cloister'? Donne is not writing from the
cloister, and if he had been would say 'In this place'. 'Faith',
he says elsewhere, 'is not on this side Knowledge but beyond it.'
_Sermons_ 50. 36. 325. This is what he means here, and I have so
punctuated it, following _1719_ and subsequent editions: 'Some vain
disport, so long as it falls short of actual sin, is permissible at
Court.'
l. 48. _what none else lost_: i.e. innocence. Others never had it.