These Hymnes thy issue, may encrease so long,
As till Gods great Venite change the song.
This is the punctuation of the editions 1612 to 1633. Grosart, Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor follow the later editions, 1635-69, in dropping the comma after 'issue', which thus becomes object to 'encrease'. 'These hymns may encrease thy issue so long, &c.' This does not seem to me to harmonize so well with l. 44 as the older punctuation of l. 43. 'These Hymns, which are thy issue, may encrease'(used intransitively, as in the phrase 'increase and multiply') 'so long as till, &c.' This suggests that the Hymns themselves will live and sound in men's ears, quickening in them virtue and religion, till they are drowned in the greater music of God's Venite. The modern version is compatible with the death of the hymns, but the survival of their issue.
l. 48. To th'only Health, to be Hydroptique so. Here again Grosart, Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor have agreed in following the editions 1625-69 against the earlier ones, 1612 and 1621. These have connected 'to be Hydroptic so' with what follows:
to be hydroptic so,
Forget this rotten world ...
But surely the full stop after 'so' in 1612 is right, and 'to be Hydroptique so' is Donne's definition of 'th'only Health'. 'Thirst is the symptom of dropsy; and a continual thirst for God's safe-sealing bowl is the best symptom of man's spiritual health.'
'Gods safe-sealing bowl' is of course the Eucharist: 'When thou commest to this seal of thy peace, the Sacrament, pray that God will give thee that light, that may direct and establish thee, in necessary and fundamentall things: that is the light of faith to see, that the Body and Blood of Christ is applied to thee in that action; But for the manner, how the Body and Bloud of Christ is there, wait his leisure if he have not yet manifested that to thee.' Sermons, &c.
Page 253, l. 72. Because shee was the forme, that made it live: i.e. the soul of the world. Aquinas, after discussion, accepts the Aristotelian view that the soul is united to the body as its form, that in virtue of which the body lives and functions. 'Illud enim quo primo aliquid operatur, est forma eius cui operatio attribuitur ... Manifestum est autem quod primum quo corpus vivit, est anima. Et cum vita manifestetur secundum diversas operationes, in diversis gradibus viventium, id quo primo operamur unumquodque horum operum vitae, est anima. Anima enim est primum quo nutrimur, et sentimus, et movemur secundum locum, et similiter quo primo intelligimus. Hoc ergo principium quo primo intelligimus, sive dicatur intellectus, sive anima intellectiva, est forma corporis. Et haec est demonstratio Aristotelis in 2 de Anima, text. 24.' Aquinas goes on to show that any other relation as of part to whole, or mover to thing moved, is unthinkable, Summa I. lxxvi. i. Elizabeth Drury in like manner was the form of the world, that in virtue of which it lived and functioned.
Page 254, l. 92. Division: a series of notes forming one melodic sequence: