Themselves are mystick books, which only wee
(Whom their imputed grace will dignifie)
Must see reveal'd.

p. 36. Eternity of Love protested.

1. 16. 'Shall, like a hallowed Lamp, for ever burn.' Compare:

Now, as in Tullia's tombe one lampe burnt clear
Unchang'd for fifteene hundred yeare.

Donne, Epithalamion (Earl of Somerset), xi. Why some lamps include in those bodies have burned many hundred years, as that discovered in the Sepulchre of Tullia, the sister of Cicero, and that of Olibius many years after, near Padua?' (Sir T. Browne, Vulgar Errors, iii. 21.)

"They had a precious composition for lamps, amongst the ancients, reserved especially for Tombes, which kept light for many hundreds of yeares.' (Donne, Fifty Sermons, 36, p. 324.) p. 38. Ask me no more where Jove bestowes.

1. 11. 'dividing throat', i. e. 'descanting', 'warbling'. 'Division' is 'the execution of a rapid melodic passage'. One seems to hear and see Celia executing elaborate trills as Carew sits entranced.

p. 39. To Roses in the bosome of Castara. From Habington's Castara, The first Part, 1634.

A

P. 40. Of thee (kind boy). From Fragmenta Aurea. Collection of all the Incomparable Peeces, written by Sir John Suckling, 1646.

P. 41. Oh! for some honest Lovers ghost. Compare Donne's Loves Deitie (Poems, Oxford, 1912, i, 54):

I long to talke with some old lovers ghost, &c.

P. 43. Out upon it, I have lov'd. From The Last Remains of S John Suckling, 1659.

P. 44. To Cynthia. From Kynaston's Leoline and Sydanis. With sundry affectionate addresses to his mistresse, under the name of Cynthia, 1642 ('Cynthiades', pp. 48–9).

P. 45. Noe more unto my thoughts appeare. This and the next poem are from Malone MS. 13, (Bodleian) pp. 65, 83.

P. 49. The Lark now leaves his watry Nest. From Davenant's Works, 1673.

Il. 11-12. Awake, awake, break through', &c.

Others neare you shall whispering speake,

And wagers lay, at which side day will breake,
And win by observing, then, whose hand it is
That opens first a curtaine, hers or his.

Compare:

Donne, Epithalamion . . . on the Lady Elizabeth, &c.

In 1. 4, 1673 reads 'to implore'; and in the next poem, 1. 22, 'all her Lovers'.

p. 51. Loves Horoscope. From Steps to the Temple. Sacred Poems, with other Delights of the Muses, 1646, 1648.

1. 25. 'twin'd upon', were united on. Compare:

true Libertie

Is lost, which alwayes with right Reason dwells
Twinn'd, and from her hath no dividual being.
Paradise Lost, xii. 85.

p. 53. Wishes. To his (supposed) Mistresse. 1. 70. 'fond and slight'. This is the reading of Harl. MSS. 6917-8 (British Museum). The flight' of all the editions is a printer's error, an easy error if one recalls the long 's'. The

MS. spelling is 'sleight'.

P. 57. To Lucasta, Going beyond the Seas. From Lovelace's Lucasta, 1649.

1. 13. 'be 'twixt' for 'betwixt' of Lucasta and later editions. This restores the verb.

1. 12. By others'. Others may find all joy in thy brown hair, but I must search the black and fair.' The 'In others' of the version in Cotton's Wits Interpreter gives a different sense: 'The joy found in thy brown hair may be found elsewhere.' This jars with what follows, spoiling the antithesis.

P...

61. To Althea.

1. 7. ‘The Gods'. One MS. copy reads 'The birds'. The 'Gods' probably are the birds. Compare Aristophanes, The Birds, 11. 685-723, translated by Swinburne, Studies in Song.

p. 62. To Amoret. From Henry Vaughan's Poems, &c., 1646. 11. 21-2. Though fate', &c. An echo of Donne's 'Dull sublunary lovers love', &c. See p. 15.

p. 63. The Call. From John Hall's Poems, 1646.

p. 64. An Epicurean Ode, i. e. an ode suggested by the Epicurean or materialist philosophy.

1. 15. Terra Lemnia. A red clay found in Lemnos and reputed an antidote to poison, but also a name for the essential constituent of the philosopher's stone. 'Of what finest clay are you made,

of what diamonds your eyes?'

p. 65. The Repulse. From Stanley's Poems, 1651. With this poem compare Carew's A Deposition from Love, pp. 34-5. p. 67. La Belle Confidente.

1. 24.

'marries either's Dust', i. e. ' each marries the other's'. Compare Donne, The Prohibition, p. 22, l. 18.

68. The Divorce. Compare Donne, The Expiration, p. 23. 1. 21. 'woe', i. e. 'woo'.

P

p. 69. The Exequies.

1. 15. 'Vast Griefs'. 'Curae leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent,' Seneca, Hippolytus, 604.

p. 70. Tell me no more how fair she is. From Henry King's Poems, 1657. This may not be King's, but there is no good ground for disfranchising him. Compare Sir William Watson's:

Bid me no more to other eyes,

With wandering worship fare, &c. Odes, &c., 1895.

P. 70. The Spring. From Cowley's Works, 1668. Compare this with Donne's To the Countesse of Bedford, 'Madame, You have refin'd mee' (Poems, Oxford, 1912, i, 191–3), a characteristically different treatment of much the same theme; e. g. ll. 47-8 with Donne's;

p. 72. The Change.

1.

7. Love's foes. Professor Moore Smith conjectures' Fort' for 'Foes', 1668. It seems to me a certain correction.

p. 73. To his Coy Mistresse. Poems, 1681.

From Marvell's Miscellaneous

1. 34. The 1681 edition reads 'glew', which I have with other editions altered to 'dew'. I am told on philological authority that 'glew' may stand for 'glow'. I shall accept that view when convinced by other examples that a seventeenth-century reader would so have understood it. My own view is that if 'glew' be the right reading, it stands for 'glue' as in 'cherrytree glue', 'plum-tree glue', and that Marvell thought of the dew as an exhalation :

And while thy willing Soul transpires

At

every pore with instant Fires.

But 'morning dew' is a frequent combination; and 'dew' suggests at once moisture and glow. Compare:

pleasant the Sun

When first on this delightful Land he spreads

His orient Beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flour,

Glistring with dew.

Paradise Lost, iv. 642–5.

1. 40. 'slow-chapt', i. e. slow-devouring. The chaps, Scottish 'chafts', are the jaws.

1. 48. Marvell may have changed 'are' to 'were' when the Commonwealth had sold Charles I's pictures. See Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, xi. 251.

p. 80. To my Excellent Lucasia. From Poems by the most deservedly Admired M. Katherine Philips, The Matchless Orinda, 1667.

DIVINE POEM S.

p. 85. All the poems by Donne given here (except Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward) were written after the death of his wife in 1617, and are eloquent of sorrow and remorse. Conceits and ruggedness notwithstanding, they may be read with the great penitentiary psalms.

p. 85. Holy Sonnets.-Thou hast made me, &c.

1. 3. I runne to death', &c. I am weary of my groaning; every night wash I my bed: and water my couch with my tears, &c. (Psalms vi. 6.)

11. 7-8. 'my feeble flesh doth waste By sinne in it', &c. There is no health in my flesh, because of thy displeasure: neither is there any rest in my bones, by reason of my sin, &c. (Psalms xxxviii. 3, &c.)

p. 86. This is my playes last scene, Donne had been in his youth a great Visiter of Ladies, a great Frequenter of Plays, a great Writer of conceited Verses' (Richard Baker, Chronicle of the Kings of England). In the sermons Donne speaks of 'the obscenities and scurrilities of a Comedy, or the drums and ejulations of a Tragedie'.

1. 13. Impute me righteous'. God promiseth to forgive us our sins and to impute us for full righteous' (Tyndale). This construction is obsolete. The regular use is as in: 'David describeth the blessed fulness of that man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without deeds' (Romans iv. 6 (Great Bible)). p. 89. Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward.

1. 1. The different spheres of heaven in the old astronomy were each moved and directed by an Intelligence or Angel. Each of the spheres after the first, the Primum Mobile, has its own movement, but is also affected by the others; hence the (as it seemed) erratic movements of the planets. So our souls, which should follow God's law, admit pleasure and business as their chief motives.

1. 10. 'my Soules forme', i. e. essence, true nature. 20. 'and the Sunne winke':