He is trebly a fool because (1) he loves, (2) he expresses his love in verse, (3) he thereby enables some one to set the verse to music and by singing it to re-awaken the passion which composition had lulled to sleep.
Page 17. Lovers Infiniteness.
This song, which is one of the obviously authentic lyrics which is not included in the A18, N, TC collection, would seem to have undergone some revision after its first issue. The version given in A25, from which Cy is copied, would seem to be the original, at least the readings of ll. 25-6 and ll. 29-30 do not look like corruptions. The reading 'beget' at l. 25 gives a better rhyme to 'yet' than 'admit'. In l. 29 A25 has obviously interchanged 'thine' and 'mine'. The slightly different version of JC gives the correct order. The generally careful D, H49, Lec group has an unusually faulty text of this poem. Among other mistakes it reads (with S96) 'Thee' for 'them' in l. 32.
'Lovers Infiniteness' is a strange title. It is not found in any of the MSS., and possibly should be 'Loves Infiniteness'. Yet the 'Lovers' suits the closing thought:
so we shall
Be one, and one anothers All.
For a poem in obvious imitation of this, see Appendix C, p. [439].
ll. 1-11. The rhetoric and rhythm of Donne's elaborate stanzas depends a good deal on their right punctuation. Mine is an attempt to correct that of 1633 without modernizing. The full stop after 'fall' is obviously an error, and so is, I think, the comma after 'spent'. The first six lines state in a rapid succession of clauses all that the poet has done to gain his lady's love. A new thought begins with 'Yet no more', &c.
l. 9. generall is the reading of two MSS. which are practically one. I have recorded it because (1) ll. 29-30 (see textual note) would seem to suggest that their version of the poem is an early one (revised by Donne), and this may be an early reading; (2) because in l. 20 this epithet is used as though repeated, 'thy gift being generall.' It would be not unlike Donne to quibble with the word, making it mean first a gift made generally to all, and secondly a gift general in its content, not limited or defined in any way. The whole poem is a piece of legal quibbling not unlike Shakespeare's 87th Sonnet:
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,