It is remarkable that D, H49, Lec, and H40 omit this half line. If the same omission was in the MS. from which 1633 printed, the present reading might be an editor's emendation. But it is older than that, for it was the reading of the MS. from which the Dutch poet Huyghens translated, and he has tried by his rhymes to produce the effect of the alliteration:
Maer, om my noch te decken
Voor sulcken ongeval, en niet te min de Min
Te voeren in mijn zin,
Komt Min, en laet my hier yet ongevoelicks wezen.
Donne means, I suppose, 'Not to be mocked by the garden, and yet to be ever the faithful lover.' Compare Loves Deitie, l. 24. 'Love might make me leave loving.' The remainder of the verse may have been suggested by Jonson's
Slow, slow, fresh Fount, keep time with my salt Tears.
Cynthias Revels (1600).
l. 17. I have ventured to adopt 'groane' for 'grow' ('grone' and 'growe' are almost indistinguishable) from A18, N, TC; D, H49, Lec; and H40. It is surely much more in Donne's style than the colourless and pointless 'growe'. It is, too, in closer touch with the next line. If 'growing' is all we are to have predicated of the mandrake, then it should be sufficient for the fountain to 'stand', or 'flow'. The chief difficulty in accepting the MS. reading is that the mandrake is most often said to shriek, sometimes to howl, not to groan:
I prethee yet remember