l. 48. That what we turne to feast, she turn'd to pray. As printed in the old editions this line, if it be correctly given, is one of the worst Donne ever wrote:
That what we turne to feast, she turn'd to pray,
i.e. apparently 'That, the day which we turn into a feast or festival she turned into a day of prayer, a fast'. But 'she turn'd to pray' in such a sense is a hideously elliptical construction and cannot, I think, be what Donne meant to write. Two emendations suggest themselves. One occurs in HN:
That when we turn'd to feast, she turn'd to pray.
When we turn'd aside from the routine of life's work to keep holiday, she did so also, but it was to pray. This is better, but it is difficult to understand how, if this be the correct reading, the error arose, and only HN reads 'when'. The emendation I have introduced presupposes only careless typography or punctuation to account for the bad line. I take it that Donne meant 'feast' and 'pray' to be imperatives, and that the line would be printed, if modernized, thus:
That what we turn to 'feast!' she turn'd to 'pray!'
That the command to keep the Sabbath day holy, which we, especially Roman Catholics and Anglicans of the Catholic school, interpret as to the Christian Church a command to feast, to keep holiday, she interpreted as a command to fast and pray. Probably both Lady Markham and Lady Bedford belonged to the more Calvinist wing of the Church. There is a distinctly Calvinist flavour about Lady Bedford's own Elegy, which reads also as though it were to some extent a rebuke to Donne for the note, either too pagan or too Catholic for her taste, of his poems on Death. See p. [422], and especially:
Goe then to people curst before they were,
Their spoyles in triumph of thy conquest weare.