A full description of the festivities will be found in Nichol's Progresses of King James, in Stow's Chronicle, and other works. In a letter to Mrs. Carleton, Chamberlain gives an account of what he saw: 'It were long and tedious to tell you all the particulars of the excessive bravery, both of men and women, but you may conceive the rest by one or two. The Lady Wotton had a gown that cost fifty pounds a yard the embroidery.... The Viscount Rochester, the Lord Hay, and the Lord Dingwall were exceeding rich and costly; but above all, they speak of the Earl of Dorset. But this extreme cost and riches makes us all poor.' Court and Times of James I, i. 226. The princess had been educated by Lord and Lady Harington, the parents of Donne's patroness, the Countess of Bedford. They accompanied her to Heidelberg, but Lord Harington died on his way home, Lady Harington shortly after her return. Donne had thus links with the Princess, and these were renewed and strengthened later when with Lord Doncaster he visited Heidelberg in 1619, and preached before her and her husband. He sent her his first printed sermon and his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, &c. (1624), and to the latter she, then in exile and trouble, replied in a courteous strain.
Page 128. Compare with the opening stanzas Chaucer's Parliament of Foules and Skeat's note (Works of Chaucer, i. 516). Birds were supposed to choose their mates on St. Valentine's Day (Feb. 14).
l. 42. this, thy Valentine. This is the reading of all the editions except 1669 and of all the MSS. except two of no independent value. I think it is better than 'this day, Valentine', which Chambers adopts from 1669. The bride is addressed throughout the stanza, and it would be a very abrupt change to refer 'thou' in l. 41 to Valentine. I take 'this, thy Valentine' to mean 'this which is thy day, par excellence', 'thy Saint Valentine's day', 'the day which saw you paired'. But 'a Valentine' is a 'true-love': 'to be your Valentine' (Hamlet, IV. v. 50), and the reference may be to Frederick,—Frederick's Day is to become an era.
ll. 43-50. The punctuation of these lines requires attention. That of the editions, which Chambers follows, arranges them thus:
Come forth, come forth, and as one glorious flame
Meeting Another growes the same,
So meet thy Fredericke, and so
To an unseparable union goe,
Since separation
Falls not on such things as are infinite,