Only let me love none; no, not the sport
From country-grass to confitures of court,
Or city's quelque-choses; let not report
My mind transport.
I confess I find it difficult to attach any exact meaning to them. Are there any instances of 'sport' thus used apparently for 'sportive lady'? The difficulty seems to me to have arisen from the accidental dropping in the 1633 edition of the semicolon after 'sport', which the 1669 editor rightly restored. What Donne means by 'the sport' is clear enough from other passages, e.g. 'the short scorn of a bridegroom's play' (Loves Alchimie), 'as she would man should despise the sport' (Farewell to Love). The prayer that report may ('let', not 'let not') carry his roving fancy from one to another, is in keeping with the whole tenor of the poem. The Grolier Club edition has the punctuation I have given, which I had adopted before I saw that edition. I find it difficult to attach any meaning to 'let not report'.
Page 14. The Canonization.
l. 7. Or the Kings reall, or his stamped face Contemplate. Donne's conceits reappear in his sermons in a different setting. 'Beloved in Christ Jesus, the heart of your gracious God is set upon you; and we his servants have told you so, and brought you thus neare him, into his Court, into his house, into the Church, but yet we cannot get you to see his face, to come to that tendernesse of conscience as to remember and consider that all your most secret actions are done in his sight and his presence; Caesars face, and Caesars inscription you can see: The face of the Prince in his coyne you can rise before the Sun to see, and sit up till mid-night to see; but if you do not see the face of God upon every piece of that mony too, all that mony is counterfeit; If Christ have not brought that fish to the hook, that brings the mony in the mouth (as he did to Peter) that mony is ill fished for.' Sermons 80. 12. 122.
l. 15. 'Man' is the reading of every MS. except Lec, which here as in several other little details appears to resemble 1633 more closely than either of the other MSS., D, H49. It is quite possible that 'man' is correct—a vivid and concrete touch, but in view of the 'men' which follows 'more' is preferable. The two words are frequently interchanged in the MSS.
ll. 24-5. The punctuation of these lines is that of D, H49, Lec, though I adopted it independently as required by the sense. The editions put a full stop after each line. Chambers alters the first (l. 24) to a semicolon and connects
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.