"This morning, timely rapt with holy fire,
I thought to form unto my jealous Muse,
What kind of creature I could most desire,
To honour, serve and love; as poets use.
I meant to make her fair, and free, and wise,
Of greatest blood, and yet more good than great;
I meant the day star should not brighter rise,
Nor lend like influence from his lucent seat.
I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet,
Hating that solemn vice of greatness, pride;
I meant each softest virtue there should meet,
Fit in that softer bosom to reside.
Only a learned, and a manly soul
I purposed her; that should, with even powers,
The rock, the spindle, and the sheers control
Of Destiny, and spin her own free hours.
Such when I meant to feign, and wish'd to see,
My Muse bade, Bedford write, and that was she!"
In spite of Donne's opinion that "in letters, by which we deliver over our
affection, and assurances of friendship ... times and daies cannot have
interest," we may note that this letter must have been written earlier
than February 1614, in which month died Lady Bedford's brother, the second
Lord Harrington, to whom allusion is here made.
X
Susan, grand-daughter of William, Lord Burleigh, was the first wife of
Philip, Earl of Montgomery. As Donne, on the eve of his German tour,
leaves a copy of his _Biathanatos_ in the safe-keeping of Sir Edward
Herbert, and the manuscript of his poems in the hands of Sir Robert Ker,
so he commits to the appropriate custody of the Countess of Montgomery ("A
new Susannah, equal to that old," Ben Jonson called her) the manuscript of
a sermon, which, when she heard him preach it, she had commended.
The corrections bracketted in the text are from a MS. copy of the
original, printed by Mr. Gosse, and reproduced here by his permission.