Page 34. Loves Exchange.
l. 11. A non obstante: a privilege, a waiving of any law in favour of an individual: 'Who shall give any other interpretation, any modification, any Non obstante upon his law in my behalf, when he comes to judge me according to that law which himself hath made.' Sermons 50. 12. 97. 'A Non obstante and priviledge to doe a sinne before hand.' Ibid. 50. 35. 313.
l. 14. minion: i.e. 'one specially favoured or beloved; a dearest friend' &c. O.E.D. Not used in a contemptuous sense. 'John the Minion of Christ upon earth, and survivor of the Apostles, (whose books rather seem fallen from Heaven, and writ with the hand which ingraved the stone Tables, then a mans work)' &c. Sermons 50. 33. 309.
ll. 29 f. Dryden borrows:
Great God of Love, why hast thou made
A Face that can all Hearts command,
That all Religions can invade,
And change the Laws of ev'ry Land?
A Song to a fair Young Lady Going out of Town in
the Spring.
Page 36. Confined Love.
Compare with this the poem Loves Freedome in Beaumont's Poems (1652), sig. E. 6:
Why should man be only ty'd
To a foolish Female thing,
When all Creatures else beside,
Birds and Beasts, change every Spring?
Who would then to one be bound,
When so many may be found?
The third verse runs:
Would you think him wise that now
Still one sort of meat doth eat,
When both Sea and Land allow
Sundry sorts of other meat?
Who would then, &c.
Poems on such themes were doubtless exercises of wit at which more than one author tried his hand in rivalry with his fellows.
l. 16. And not to seeke new lands, or not to deale withall. I have, after some consideration, adhered to the 1633 reading. Chambers has adopted that of the later editions, taking the line to mean that a man builds ships in order to seek new lands and to deal or trade with all lands. But ships cannot trade with inland countries. The form 'withal' is the regular one for 'with' when it follows the noun it governs. 'We build ships not to let them lie in harbours but to seek new lands with, and to trade with.' The MS. evidence is not of much assistance, because it is not clear in all cases what 'wth all' stands for. The words were sometimes separated even when the simple preposition was intended. 'People, such as I have dealt with all in their marchaundyse.' Berners' Froissart, I. cclxvii. 395 (O.E.D.). But D, H49, Lec read 'wth All', supporting Chambers.
For the sentiment compare:
A stately builded ship well rig'd and tall
The Ocean maketh more majesticall:
Why vowest thou to live in Sestos here,
Who on Loves seas more glorious would appeare.
Marlowe, Hero and Leander: First Sestiad 219-222.
For 'deale withall' compare:
For ye have much adoe to deale withal.
Spenser's Faerie Queene, VI. i. 10.
Page 37. The Dreame.
ll. 1-10. Deare love, for nothing lesse then thee
Would I have broke this happy dreame,
It was a theame
For reason, much too strong for phantasie,
Therefore thou wak'dst me wisely; yet
My Dreame thou brok'st not, but continued'st it,
Thou art so truth, that thoughts of thee suffice,
To make dreames truths; and fables histories;
Enter these armes, &c.
I have left the punctuation of the first stanza unaltered. The sense is clear and any modernization alters the rhetoric. Chambers places a semicolon after 'dreame' and a full stop after 'phantasie'. The last is certainly wrong, for the statement 'It was a theme', &c. is connected not with what precedes, but with what follows, 'Therefore thou waked'st me wisely.' In like manner Chambers's full stop after 'but continued'st it' breaks the close connexion with the two following lines, which are really an adverbial clause of explanation or reason. 'My dream thou brokest not, but continued'st it,' for 'Thou art so truth', &c. A full stop might more justifiably be placed after 'histories', but the semicolon is more in Donne's manner.
l. 7. Thou art so truth. The evidence of the MSS. shows that both 'truth' and 'true' were current versions and explains the alteration of 1635-69. But 'truth' is both the more difficult reading and the more subtle expression of Donne's thought; 'true' is the obvious emendation of less metaphysical copyists and editors. Donne's 'Love' is not true as opposed to false only; she is 'truth' as opposed to dreams or phantasms or aught that partakes of unreality. She is essentially truth as God is: 'Respondeo dicendum quod ... veritas invenitur in intellectu, secundum quod apprehendit rem ut est; et in re, secundum quod habet esse conformabile intellectui. Hoc autem maxime invenitur in Deo. Nam esse eius non solum est conforme suo intelligere; et suum intelligere est mensura et causa omnis alterius esse, et omnis alterius intellectus; et ipse est suum esse et intelligere. Unde sequitur quod non solum in ipso sit veritas, sed quod ipse sit ipsa summa et prima veritas. Summa I. vi. 5.
To deify the object of your love was a common topic of love-poetry; Donne does so with all the subtleties of scholastic theology at his finger-ends. In this single poem he attributes to the lady addressed two attributes of Deity, (1) the identity of being and essence, (2) the power of reading the thoughts directly.
The Dutch poet keeps this point:
de Waerheyt is so ghy, en
Ghy zijt de Waerheyt so.
ll. 11-12. As lightning, or a Tapers light
Thine eyes, and not thy noise wak'd mee.
'A sodain light brought into a room doth awaken some men; but yet a noise does it better.' Sermons 50. 38. 344.
'A candle wakes some men as well as a noise.' Sermons 80. 61. 617.
ll. 15-16. But when I saw thou sawest my heart,
And knew'st my thoughts, beyond an Angels art.
Modern editors, by removing the comma after 'thoughts', have altered the sense of these lines. It is not that she could read his thoughts better than an angel, but that she could read them at all, a power which is not granted to Angels.
St. Thomas (Summa Theol. Quaest. lvii. Art. 4) discusses 'Utrum angeli cognoscant cogitationes cordium', and concludes, 'Cognoscunt Angeli cordium cogitationes in suis effectibus: ut autem in se ipsis sunt, Deo tantum sunt naturaliter cognitae.' Angels may read our thoughts by subtler signs than our words and acts, or even those changes of countenance and pulsation which we note in each other, 'quanto subtilius huiusmodi immutationes occultas corporales perpendunt.' But to know them as they are in the intellect and will belongs only to God, to whom only the freedom of the human will is subject, and a man's thoughts are subject to his will. 'Manifestum est autem, quod ex sola voluntate dependet, quod aliquis actu aliqua consideret; quia cum aliquis habet habitum scientiae, vel species intelligibiles in eo existentes, utitur eis cum vult. Et ideo dicit Apostolus I Corinth. secundo: quod quae sunt hominis, nemo novit nisi spiritus hominis qui in ipso est.'
Donne recurs to this theme very frequently: 'Let the Schoole dispute infinitely (for he that will not content himself with means of salvation till all Schoole points be reconciled, will come too late); let Scotus and his Heard think, That Angels, and separate souls have a naturall power to understand thoughts ... And let Aquinas present his arguments to the contrary, That those spirits have no naturall power to know thoughts; we seek no farther, but that Jesus Christ himself thought it argument enough to convince the Scribes and Pharisees, and prove himself God, by knowing their thoughts. Eadem Maiestate et potentia sayes S. Hierome, Since you see I proceed as God, in knowing your thoughts, why beleeve you not that I may forgive his sins as God too?' Sermons 80. 11. 111; and compare also Sermons 80. 9. 92.
This point is also preserved in the Dutch version:
Maer als ick u sagh sien wat om mijn hertje lagh
En weten wat ick docht (dat Engel noyt en sagh).
M. Legouis in a recent French version has left it ambiguous:
Mais quand j'ai vu que tu voyais mon coeur
Et savais mes pensées au dela du savoir d'un ange.
The MS. reading, 14 'but an Angel', heightens the antithesis.
ll. 27-8. Perchance as torches which must ready bee
Men light and put out.
'If it' (i.e. a torch) 'have never been lighted, it does not easily take light, but it must be bruised and beaten first; if it have been lighted and put out, though it cannot take fire of it self, yet it does easily conceive fire, if it be presented within any convenient distance.' Sermons 50. 36. 332.
Page 38. A Valediction: of Weeping.
ll. 1-9. I have changed the comma at l. 6 to a semicolon, as the first image, that of the coins, closes here. Chambers places a full stop at l. 4 'worth', and apparently connects the next two lines with what follows—wrongly, I think. Finishing the figure of the coins, coined, stamped, and given their value by her, Donne passes on to a couple of new images. 'The tears are fruits of much grief; but they are symbols of more to come. For, as your image perishes in each tear that falls, so shall we perish, be nothing, when between us rolls the "salt, estranging sea".'
It is, I suppose, by an inadvertence that Chambers has left 'divers' unchanged to 'diverse'. I cannot think there is any reference to 'a diver in the pearly seas'. Grolier and the Dutch poet divide as here:
Laet voor uw aengesicht mijn trouwe tranen vallen,
Want van dat aengensicht ontfangen sy uw' munt,
En rijsen tot de waerd dies' uwe stempel gunt
Bevrucht van uw' gedaent: vrucht van veel' ongevallen,
Maer teekenen van meer, daer ghy valt met den traen,
Die van u swanger was, en beyde wy ontdaen
Verdwijnen, soo wy op verscheiden oever staen.