John Donne

by John Donne

  The order of the poems poses another problem. The 1633 first edition groups poems by genre, but is not consistent; for example, the Songs and Sonnets are interrupted by ‘The First Anniversary’, ‘A Funeral Elegy’ and ‘The Second Anniversary’. Consequently, this edition follows the 1635 order, which not only includes additional poems but also rearranges the poems into more consistent generic groupings, with some notable exceptions. ‘The Flea’, which begins Songs and Sonnets in 1635, appears here before ‘The Curse’, which is its position both in 1633 and in five out of six Group I manuscripts,8 because ‘The Good Morrow’ makes a much better beginning for Songs and Sonnets. ‘Sappho to Philænis’ appeared with the verse letters in 1635, but is printed here with the elegies. ‘Image of Her Whom I Love’ was included amidst the elegies, but appears here with Songs and Sonnets, following The Variorum and most modern editions. The verse letters are grouped according to the addressee. Poems not included in 1635 are added to the appropriate genre. The Variorum editors have shown that Donne planned the order of the Epigrams, Elegies and Holy Sonnets, and that he rearranged the sequences as he revised the poems. For these three groups of poems, therefore, rather than following 1635 I have reproduced the most complete available authorial sequence.9 The notes do not attempt to explain what a poem means; rather, they provide definitions and information so that readers can reach their own interpretations. Definitions are drawn primarily from The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 2005, http://www.oed.com), although Donne’s usage regularly predates the earliest examples given there. For glossing Donne’s pervasive sexual double meanings, Eric Partridge, Shakespeare’s Bawdy: A Literary and Psychological Essay and a Comprehensive Glossary (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1948), and Frankie A. Rubinstein, Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Sexual Puns and their Significance (London: Macmillan Press, 1984), provide valuable supplements to the OED. Biblical quotations are from the King James Bible (1611). Birth and death dates are primarily from The Dictionary of National Biography Online (Oxford University Press, 2005, http://dictionary.oed.com).

  The annotations gloss words unfamiliar to readers today, but equally important, they note familiar words that had different meanings in Donne’s day. Since the poems regularly incorporate a variety of possible definitions to thicken and complicate the meaning, and in some cases to create multiple meanings for the poem as a whole, the notes often contain several, sometimes seemingly contradictory, possibilities.

  NOTES

  1. John Donne, Letters to Severall Persons of Honour, ed. M. Thomas Hester (1651; Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1977), p. 197.

  2. The Loseley manuscript of Donne’s epitaph upon his wife’s death may also be in Donne’s handwriting. See John Donne’s Marriage Letters in the Folger Shakespeare Library, ed. M. Thomas Hester, Robert Parker Sorlien and Dennis Flynn (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, 2005).

  3. Additional poems published during Donne’s lifetime are listed in the Chronology.

  4. The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, ed. Gary A. Stringer et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), vol. 2, p. xlix. The manuscripts are listed in vol. 2, pp. xxxii–xxxvii; the poems in vol. 2, pp. xix–xxv.

  5. The introduction to John Donne: The Anniversaries, ed. Frank Manley (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963) explains Donne’s responsibility for the 1611 text and the list of errata.

  6. The following Variorum volumes were available when this edition went to press:

  Vol. 2 The Elegies

  Vol. 6 The Anniversaries and the Epicedes and Obsequies

  Vol. 7, Part 1 The Holy Sonnets

  Vol. 8 The Epigrams, Epithalamions, Epitaphs, Inscriptions, and Miscellaneous Poems

  7. The abbreviation ‘ms’ is used whether the variant appears in one or several manuscripts. For more information on which manuscripts contain specific variants, readers should consult The Variorum or editions by Shawcross, Grierson, etc., cited in the Further Reading.

  8. The Group I manuscripts contain the largest number of well-grouped Donne poems. They are listed in The Variorum Edition, vol. 2, p. xliii, and in A Bibliography of Dr John Donne, Dean of Saint Paul’s, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), p. 185. The Donne Variorum website (http://donnevariorum.com) includes a first-line index to seventeenth-century editions and the most important manuscript collections, including the Group I manuscripts. For descriptions of specific manuscripts, see Index of English Literary Manuscripts, ed. Peter Beal (London: Mansell; New York: R. R. Bowker, 1980), vol. 1, pp. 243–61. Early seventeenth-century editions and important manuscripts are available at Digital Donne: digitaldonne.tamu.edu/.

  9. For additional information, readers should consult the Variorum introductions. For a succinct, and extremely helpful, summary of Donne’s role in arranging these three sequences of poems, see Ernest W. Sullivan, II, ‘What Have the Donne Variorum Textual Editors Discovered, and Why Should Anyone Care?’, John Donne Journal 22 (2003), pp. 95–107.

  Songs and Sonnets

  The Good Morrow

  I wonder by my troth, what thou and I

  Did, till we loved. Were we not weaned till then?

  But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

  Or snorted we in the’seven sleepers’ den?

  ’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.

  If ever any beauty I did see,

  Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

  And now good morrow to our waking souls,

  Which watch not one another out of fear,

  [10] For love, all love of other sights controls,

  And makes one little room an everywhere.

  Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,

  Let maps to others, worlds on worlds have shown,

  Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

  My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

  And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;

  Where can we find two better hemispheres

  Without sharp North, without declining West?

  Whatever dies was not mixed equally;

  [20] If our two loves be one, or thou and I

  Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

  Song

  Go and catch a falling star,

  Get with child a mandrake root,

  Tell me where all past years are,

  Or who cleft the Devil’s foot,

  Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

  Or to keep off envy’s stinging,

  And find

  What wind

  Serves to advance an honest mind.

  [10] If thou be’est born to strange sights,

  Things invisible to see,

  Ride ten thousand days and nights,

  Till age snow white hairs on thee,

  Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me

  All strange wonders that befell thee,

  And swear

  Nowhere

  Lives a woman true, and fair.

  If thou find’st one, let me know,

  [20] Such a pilgrimage were sweet;

  Yet do not, I would not go,

  Though at next door we might meet;

  Though she were true when you met her,

  And last till you write your letter,

  Yet she

  Will be

  False, ere I come, to two, or three.

  Woman’s Constancy

  Now thou hast loved me one whole day,

  Tomorrow when thou leav’st, what wilt thou say?

  Wilt thou then antedate some new-made vow?

  Or say that now

  We are not just those persons which we were?

  Or, that oaths made in reverential fear

  Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear?

  Or, as true deaths, true marriages untie,

  So lovers’ contracts, images of those,

  [10] Bind but till sleep, death’s image, them
unloose?

  Or, your own end to justify,

  For having purposed change and falsehood, you

  Can have no way but falsehood to be true?

  Vain lunatic, against these ’scapes I could

  Dispute, and conquer, if I would,

  Which I abstain to do,

  For by tomorrow, I may think so too.

  The Undertaking

  I have done one braver thing

  Than all the Worthies did,

  And yet a braver thence doth spring,

  Which is, to keep that hid.

  It were but madness now t’impart

  The skill of specular stone,

  When he which can have learned the art

  To cut it can find none.

  So, if I now should utter this,

  [10] Others (because no more

  Such stuff to work upon, there is,)

  Would love but as before.

  But he who loveliness within

  Hath found, all outward loathes,

  For he who colour loves, and skin,

  Loves but their oldest clothes.

  If, as I have, you also do

  Virtue’attired in woman see,

  And dare love that, and say so too,

  [20] And forget the he and she,

  And if this love, though placed so,

  From profane men you hide,

  Which will no faith on this bestow,

  Or, if they do, deride,

  Then you have done a braver thing

  Than all the Worthies did.

  And a braver thence will spring

  Which is, to keep that hid.

  The Sun Rising

  Busy old fool, unruly Sun,

  Why dost thou thus,

  Through windows and through curtains call on us?

  Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?

  Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

  Late schoolboys and sour prentices,

  Go tell court-huntsmen that the King will ride,

  Call country ants to harvest offices;

  Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,

  [10] Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

  Thy beams, so reverend and strong,

  Why should’st thou think?

  I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,

  But that I would not lose her sight so long:

  If her eyes have not blinded thine,

  Look, and tomorrow late, tell me

  Whether both the Indias of spice and mine

  Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me.

  Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,

  [20] And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

  She’s all states, and all princes I,

  Nothing else is.

  Princes do but play us; compared to this,

  All honour’s mimic, all wealth alchemy;

  Thou Sun art half as happy’as we,

  In that the world’s contracted thus.

  Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be

  To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.

  Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;

  [30] This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere.

  The Indifferent

  I can love both fair and brown,

  Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays,

  Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays,

  Her whom the country formed, and whom the town,

  Her who believes, and her who tries,

  Her who still weeps with spongy eyes,

  And her who is dry cork, and never cries;

  I can love her, and her, and you and you,

  I can love any, so she be not true.

  [10] Will no other vice content you?

  Will it not serve your turn to do as did your mothers?

  Or have you all old vices spent, and now would find out others?

  Or doth a fear, that men are true, torment you?

  O we are not, be not you so,

  Let me, and do you, twenty know.

  Rob me, but bind me not, and let me go.

  Must I, who came to travail thorough you,

  Grow your fixed subject, because you are true?

  Venus heard me sigh this song,

  [20] And by love’s sweetest part, variety, she swore,

  She heard not this till now; and that it should be so no more.

  She went, examined, and returned ere long,

  And said, alas, some two or three

  Poor heretics in love there be,

  Which think to ’stablish dangerous constancy.

  But I have told them, since you will be true,

  You shall be true to them, who’are false to you.

  Love’s Usury

  For every hour that thou wilt spare me now,

  I will allow,

  Usurious God of Love, twenty to thee,

  When with my brown, my grey hairs equal be;

  Till then, Love, let my body reign, and let

  Me travel, sojourn, snatch, plot, have, forget,

  Resume my last year’s relict: think that yet

  We’had never met.

  Let me think any rival’s letter mine,

  [10] And at next nine

  Keep midnight’s promise; mistake by the way

  The maid, and tell the lady’of that delay;

  Only let me love none, no, not the sport;

  From country grass, to comfitures of court,

  Or city’s quelque-choses, let report

  My mind transport.

  This bargain’s good; if when I’am old, I be

  Inflamed by thee,

  If thine own honour, or my shame, or pain,

  [20] Thou covet most, at that age thou shalt gain.

  Do thy will then, then subject and degree,

  And fruit of love, Love I submit to thee;

  Spare me till then, I’ll bear it, though she be

  One that loves me.

  The Canonization

  For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love,

  Or chide my palsy, or my gout,

  My five grey hairs, or ruined fortune flout,

  With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,

  Take you a course, get you a place,

  Observe his honour, or his grace,

  Or the King’s real, or his stamped face

  Contemplate, what you will, approve,

  So you will let me love.

  [10] Alas, alas, who’s injured by my love?

  What merchant’s ships have my sighs drowned?

  Who says my tears have overflowed his ground?

  When did my colds a forward spring remove?

  When did the heats which my veins fill

  Add one more to the plaguy bill?

  Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still

  Litigious men, which quarrels move,

  Though she and I do love.

  Call us what you will, we’are made such by love;

  [20] Call her one, me another fly,

  We’are tapers too, and at our own cost die,

  And we in us find the’eagle and the dove.

  The phoenix riddle hath more wit

  By us, we two being one, are it.

  So to one neutral thing both sexes fit.

  We die and rise the same, and prove

  Mysterious by this love.

  We can die by it, if not live by love,

  And if unfit for tombs and hearse

  [30] Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;

  And if no piece of chronicle we prove,

  We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms;

  As well a well-wrought urn becomes

  The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,

  And by these hymns, all shall approve

  Us canonized for love.

  And thus invoke us: you whom reverend love

  Made one anothe
r’s hermitage,

  You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage,

  [40] Who did the whole world’s soul contract, and drove

  Into the glasses of your eyes

  So made such mirrors, and such spies,

  That they did all to you epitomize,

  Countries, towns, courts, beg from above

  A pattern of your love.

  The Triple Fool

  I am two fools, I know,

  For loving, and for saying so

  In whining poetry;

  But where’s that wiseman that would not be I,

  If she would not deny?

  Then as th’earth’s inward narrow crooked lanes

  Do purge seawater’s fretful salt away,

  I thought, if I could draw my pains

  Through rhyme’s vexation, I should them allay;

  [10] Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,

  For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

  But when I have done so,

  Some man, his art and voice to show,

  Doth set and sing my pain,

  And by delighting many, frees again

  Grief, which verse did restrain.

  To love and grief tribute of verse belongs,

  But not of such as pleases when ’tis read,

  Both are increased by such songs,

  [20] For both their triumphs so are published,

  And I, which was two fools, do so grow three;

  Who are a little wise, the best fools be.

  Lovers’ Infiniteness

  If yet I have not all thy love,