Till my returne, repaire
And recompact my scattered body so.
This verse is rightly printed in the 1633 edition. In that of 1635 it went wrong; and the errors were transmitted through all the subsequent editions, and have been retained by Grosart and Chambers, but corrected in the Grolier Club edition. The full stop after 'so' was changed to a comma on the natural but mistaken assumption that 'so' pointed forward to the immediately following 'as'. In fact, 'so' refers back to the preceding verse. Donne has described how from his anatomy or skeleton, i.e. his name scratched in the glass, the lady may repair and recompact his whole frame, and he opens the new verse by bidding her do so. Compare: 'In this chapter ... we have Job's Anatomy, Jobs Sceleton, the ruins to which he was reduced.... Job felt the hand of destruction upon him, and he felt the hand of preservation too; and it was all one hand: This is God's Method ... even God's demolitions are super-edifications, his Anatomies, his dissections are so many recompactings, so many resurrections; God winds us off the Skein, that he may weave us up into the whole peece, and he cuts us out of the whole peece into peeces, that he may make us up into a whole garment.' Sermons 80. 43. 127-9. Again, 'It is a divorce and no super-induction, it is a separating, and no redintegration.' Sermons 80. 55. 552. With the third line, 'As all the virtuous powers,' Donne begins a new comparison which is completed in the next stanza. Therefore the sixth stanza closes rightly in the 1633 text with a colon. The full stop of the later editions, which Chambers adopts, is obviously wrong. Grosart has a semicolon, but as he retains the comma at 'so' and puts a semicolon at the end of the previous stanza, the sense becomes very obscure.
Page 28. Twicknam Garden.
l. 1. surrounded with tears: i.e. overflowed with tears, the root idea of 'surrounded'. The Dutch poet translates:
Van suchten hytgedort, van tranen overvloeyt.
Compare: 'The traditional doctrines in the Roman Church, which are so many, as that they overflow even the water of life, the Scriptures themselves, and suppresse and surround them.' Sermons 80. 59. 599.
With this whole poem compare: 'Sir, Because I am in a place and season where I see every thing bud forth, I must do so too, and vent some of my meditations to you.... The pleasantnesse of the season displeases me. Everything refreshes, and I wither, and I grow older and not better, my strength diminishes and my load growes, and being to pass more and more stormes, I finde that I have not onely cast out all my ballast, which nature and time gives, Reason and discretion, and so am as empty and light as Vanity can make me, but I have overfraught myself with vice, and so am ridd(l)ingly subject to two contrary wracks, Sinking and Oversetting,' &c. Letters (1651), pp. 78-9 (To Sir Henry Goodyere).
l. 15. Indure, nor yet leave loving. This is at first sight a strange reading, and I was disposed to think that 1635-69, which has the support of several MSS. (none of very high textual authority), must be right. It is strange to hear the Petrarchian lover (Donne is probably addressing the Countess of Bedford) speak of 'leaving loving' as though it were in his power. The reading 'nor leave this garden' suits what follows: 'Not to be mocked by the garden and yet to linger here in the vicinity of her I love let me become,' &c.