Not panting after growing beauties; so
I shall ebb on with them who homeward go.”
Such was John Donne’s first known tribute to his friend. She must have been early and thoroughly familiar with his manuscripts, which were passed about freely, Dr. Grosart thinks, prior to 1613, and which burned what Massinger would call “no adulterate incense” to herself. Her bays are to be gleaned off many a tree, and she must have cast a frequent influence on Donne’s work, which is not traceable now. He seems to have had a Crashaw-like devotion to the Christian saint whose inheritance
“Bethina was, and jointure Magdalo,”
not unconnected with the fact that some one else was Magdalen also; never does he tire of dwelling on the coincidence and the difference. In one of his quaintly moralizing songs, he goes seeking a “true-love” primrose, where but on Montgomery Hill! for he is hers, by all chivalrous tokens, as much as he may be. Again he cites, and almost with humor:
“that perplexing eye
Which equally claims love and reverence.”
And his platonics make their honorable challenge at the end of some fine lines:
“So much do I love her choice, that I
Would fain love him that shall be loved of her!”