PAGE =235=, ll. 133-6. Chambers alters the punctuation of these lines
in such a way as to connect them more closely:
So short is life, that every peasant strives,
In a torn house, or field, to have three lives;
And as in lasting, so in length is man,
Contracted to an inch, who was a span.
But the punctuation of _1633_ is careful and correct. A new paragraph
begins with 'And as in lasting, so, &c.' From length of years Donne
passes to physical stature. The full stop is at 'lives', the semicolon
at 'span'. Grosart and the Grolier Club editor punctuate correctly.
l. 144. _We'are scarce our Fathers shadowes cast at noone_: Compare:
But now the sun is just above our head,
We doe those shadowes tread;
And to brave clearnesse all things are reduc'd.
_A Lecture upon the Shadowe._
PAGE =236=, l. 160. _And with new Physicke_: i.e. the new mineral
drugs of the Paracelsians.
PAGE =237=, l. 190. _Be more then man, or thou'rt lesse then an Ant._
Compare _To M^r Rowland Woodward_, p. 185, ll. 16-18 and note.
l. 205. _The new Philosophy calls all in doubt, &c._ The philosophy
of Galileo and Copernicus has displaced the earth and discredited
the concentric arrangement of the elements,--earth, water, air,
fire. Norton quotes: 'The fire is an element most hot and dry, pure,
subtill, and so clear as it doth not hinder our sight looking through
the same towards the stars, and is placed next to the Spheare of the
Moon, under the which it is turned about like a celestial Spheare'.
_M. Blundeville His Exercises_, 1594.