On Anacreon continuing a lover in his old age:Love was with thy life, entwin’d, Close as heat with fire is join’d, A powerful brand prescrib’d the date Of thine, like Meleager’s fate, Th’ antiperistasis of age More enflam’d thy amorous rage2.In the following verses we have an allusion to a Rabbinical opinion concerning Manna:Variety I ask not: give me one To live perpetually upon. The person Love does to us fit, Like manna, has the taste of all in it”.Thus Donne shews his medicinal knowledge in some encomiastick verses:In everything there naturally grows A Balsamum to keep it fresh and new, If ’twere not injur’d by extrinsique blows; Your youth and beauty are this balm in you. But you, of learning and religion, And virtue and such ingredients, have made A mithridate, whose operation Keeps off, or cures what can be done or said.Though the following lines of Donne, on the last night of the year, have something in them too scholastick, they are not inelegant:This twilight of two years, not past nor next, Some emblem is of me, or I of this, Who, meteor-like, of stuff and form perplext, Whose what and where, in disputation is, If I should call me anything, should miss.I sum the years and me, and find me not Debtor to th’ old, nor creditor to th’ new, That cannot say, my thanks I have forgot, Nor trust I this with hopes; and yet scarce true This bravery is, since these times shew’d me you’s.
Yet more abstruse and profound is Donine’s reflection upon Man as a Microcosm:If men be worlds, there is in everyone Something to answer in some proportion All the world’s riches: and in good men, this Virtue our form’s form, and our soul’s soul is.Of thoughts so far-fetched, as to be not only unexpected, but unnatural, all their books are full.To a lady, who wrote poesies for rings.They, who above do various circles find, Say, like a ring th’ æquator heaven does bind. When heaven shall be adorn’d by thee (Which then more heaven than ’tis, will be,) ‘Tis thou must write the poesy there, For it wanteth one as yet,Though the sun pass through ‘t twice a year, The sun, which is esteem’d the god of wit”.The difficulties which have been raised about identity in philosophy, are by Cowley with still more perplexity applied to Love:Five years ago (says story) I lov’d you, For which you call me most inconstant now; Pardon me, madam, you mistake the man; For I am not the same that I was then; No flesh is now the same ’twas then in me, And that my mind is chang’d yourself may see.The same thoughts to retain still, and intents, Were more inconstant far; for accidents Must of all things most strangely inconstant
I
from one subject they t’ another move: My members then, the father members were From whence these take their birth, which now are here.
If then this body love what th’ other did, ‘Twere incest, which by nature is forbid The love of different women is, in geographical poetry, compared to travels through different countries:
Hast thou not found, each woman’s breast (The land where thou hast travelled) Either by savages possest, Or wild, and uninhabited? What joy could’st take, or what repose, In countries so uncivilis’d as those?
Lust, the scorching dog star, here Rages with immoderate heat; Whilst Pride, the rugged Northern Bear, In others makes the cold too great. And where these are temperate known, The soil’s all barren sand, or rocky stone”.
A lover, burnt up by his affection, is com-pared to Egypt:
The fate of Egypt I sustain, And never feel the dew of rain, From clouds which in the head appear; But all my too much moisture owe To overflowings of the heart below.
The lover supposes his lady acquainted with the ancient laws of augury and rites of sacrifice:
And yet this death of mine, I fear, Will ominous to her appear: When sound in every other part, Her sacrifice is found without an heart. For the last tempest of my death Shall sigh out that too, with my breath”.
That the chaos was harmonised has been re-cited of old; but whence the different sounds arose, remained for a modern to discover:
Th’ ungovern’d parts no correspondent knew, An artless war from thwarting motions grew; Till they to number and fixt rules were brought. Water and air be for the Tenor chose, Earth made the Base, the Treble flame arose*2.
The tears of lovers are always of great poeti-cal account; but Donne has extended them into worlds. If the lines are not easily understood, they may be read again.SAMUEL JOHNSON
On a round ball
A workman, that hath copies by, can lay An Europe, Africa, and an Asia, And quickly make that, which was nothing, all.
So doth each tear, Which thee doth wear, A globe, yea world, by that impression grow, Till thy tears mixt with mine do overflow This world, by waters sent from thee my heaven dissolved so 43.
On reading the following lines, the reader may perhaps cry out-Confusion worse confounded
Here lies a she sun, and a he moon there, She gives the best light to his sphere, Or each is both, and all, and so They unto one another nothing owe*4.
Who but Donne would have thought that a good man is a telescope?
Though God be our true glass, through which
we see All, since the being of all things is he, Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive Things, in proportion fit, by perspective Deeds of good men; for by their living here, Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near’s
Who would imagine it possible that in a very few lines so many remote ideas could be brought together?
Since ’tis my doom, Love’s undershrieve,
Why this reprieve?
Why doth my She Advowson fly Incumbency?
To sell thyself dost thou intend By candle’s end
And hold the contrast thus in doubt, Life’s taper out?
Think but how soon the market fails, Your sex lives faster than the males; As if to measure age’s span, The sober Julian were th’ acount of man, Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian”.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Of enormous and disgusting hyberboles, these may be examples
By every wind that comes this way, Send me at least a sigh or two, Such and so many I’ll repay As shall themselves make winds to get to you”.
COWLEY
In tears I’ll waste these eyes, By Love so vainly fed; So lust of old the Deluge punished,
COWLEY
All arm’d in brass the richest dress of war (A dismal glorious sight), he shone afar. The sun himself started with sudden fright, To see his beams return so dismal bright”
COWLEY
An universal consternation:
His bloody eyes he burls round, his sharp paws Tear up the ground; then runs he wild about, Lashing his angry tail and roaring out. Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there;Trees, though no wind is stirring, shake with fear;
Silence and horror fill the place around: Echo itself dares scarce repeat the sounds.
COWLEY
Their fictions were often violent and un-natural
Of his Mistress bathing:
The fish around her crouded, as they do To the false light that treacherous fishers shew, And all with as much ease might taken be, As she at first took me: For ne’er did light so clear Among the waves appear, Though every night the sun himself set there'”.
COWLEY
The poetical effect of a Lover’s name upon glass
My name engrav’d herein
Doth contribute my firmness to this glass; Which, ever since that charm, hath been As hard as that which grav’d it was?
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Their conceits were sometimes slight and trifling. On an inconstant woman:
He enjoys thy calmy sunshine now, And no breath stirring hears, In the clear heaven of thy brow, No smallest cloud appears.
He sees thee gentle, fair and gay, And trusts the faithless April of thy May
COWLEY
Upon a paper written with the juice of lemon and read by the fire:
Nothing yet in thee is seen; But when a genial heat warms thee within, A new-born wood of various lines there grows; Here buds an L, and there a B, Here sprouts a V, and there a T, And all the flourishing letters stand in rows”