The Complete Poems of John Donne

Robin Robbins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138133396
• eBook ISBN: 9781317862031
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The Poems of John Donne is one volume paperback edition of the poems of John Donne (1572-1631) based on a comprehensive re-evaluation of his work from composition to circulation and reception. Donne's output is tremendously varied in style and form and demonstrates his ability to exercise his rhetorical capabilities according to context and occasion. This edition aims to present the text of all his known poems, from the epigrams, songs and satires written for fellow young men about town, to the more mature verse-epistles and memorial elegies written for his patrons.

The Longman Annotated English Poets series traditionally aims to present poems in chronological order; in this edition, however, the principle has been observed only within generic sections. This organisation reproduces the manner in which Donne's original readers first encountered the poems in the various manuscripts of his elegies and satires that circulated in Donne's lifetime. Volume One contains the Epigrams, Verse Letters to Friends, Love Lyrics, Love Elegies and Satires; Volume Two contains the religious poems, Wedding Celebrations, Verse Epistles to Patronesses, Commemorations, and the Anniversaries. The lyrics have been arranged alphabetically for ease of reference and because, in all but a few cases, precise date of composition is impossible to determine. Each poem has extensive editorial commentary designed to put the twenty-first century reader in possession of all that is necessary fully to appreciate Donne's work. A substantial headnote sets each poem in its historical and literary context, while the annotations give detailed guidance on the wealth of classical and religious allusions and give full representation to the literary, historical and philosophical culture out of which the poems grew. In keeping with the traditions of the series, Donne's own text has been modernised in punctuation and spelling except where to do so would alter or disrupt a rhyme.

LOVE-LYRICS (‘SONGS AND SONNETS’)

Air and Angels

Date and context. c. 1607–8? The possible echo in ll. 23–4 of Victorellus’ book on angels of 1605, perhaps alluded to in Litany 47 (1608) and SecAn (1611), and explicitly used in Pseudo-Martyr (1610), together with the parallel in ll. 1–2 with BedfordReason (c. 1607–8), suggest a relatively late date, as does the rhetorical sophistication of the poem. With its employment of a shifting pseudo-logic of excuse, traditional flattery and religious dogma to subordinate the woman, asserting her inferior, merely physical purity while claiming in the rejection of a blazon (ll. 10–22) that the speaker has risen above his own bodily attraction towards her, this is literally a metaphysical poem—perplexing ‘the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy’ (Dryden, Discourse of the Original and Progress of Satire, 1692), if it is thought of as actually addressed to a woman. That seems unlikely, given the focus on a specifically male anxiety and the disparaging conclusion. This recalls Mummy, which addresses a male reader, but rejects spiritualisation of love of women and talk of angels in favour of the physical. Thematically, if not necessarily chronologically, Air thus falls between Mummy and Ecstasy.

Analogues. Richmond (pp. 234–7) sees D. as here ‘Synthesizing motifs’ from several poems.

Text. Though Shawcross, JDJ 9 (1990) 33–41, argues that Group I (followed as in most of the love-lyrics by 1633, correcting from Group II) appears to give the most error-free text, the possibly slightly earlier text of H40 (see Gardner ESS lxv–lxvii) does not require correction, so is followed here. Group I is probably erroneous once in line 13, Group II in ll. 17 (twice) and 22, Group III in ll. 14 and 28. Within Group I, H49 and D do not contain the further errors of C57 and Lec. None of the differences between groups of MSS suggests authorial revision.

Form. That the stanzas comprise fourteen lines does not suffice to indicate an intended comment on the sonnet-tradition, since neither line-length nor rhyme-scheme are those of the sonnet. The seventh line of the first stanza and ninth of the second do provide a ‘turn’, but D.’s dialectic mode makes their occurrence probable independently of formal aims.

TWICE or thrice had I loved thee

Before I knew thy face or name;

Sources collated: H40; Group I: H49, D, C57, Lec; Group II: TCC, TCD, DC; Group III: Dob, S96, Lut, O’F; 1633, 1635

Base text: H40

Select variants:

Heading I, II, III, 1633, 1635

Heading Probably not D.’s, though it occurs in all MSS collated here except H40. The obvious inapplicability throughout of the pun on the coin ‘angel’, as in Bracelet, may serve as a general warning against simplistically and unselectively reading every possible word-play into a poem of this period.

1 To be read as the usual catalectic iambic tetrameter, with stresses on ‘I’ and ‘thee’.

1–2 Twice or thrice … name] Cp. Letters p. 260: ‘I would I could be believed when I say that all that is written of them is but prophecy of her’, BedfordReason 3–4, and the unrestricted previous affairs implied in Morrow 6–7.

2 or name] That this is an anagram of ‘An More’ is presumably irrelevant.

So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,

Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be.

5

Still, when to where thou wert I came,

Some lovely glorious nothing I did see;

But since my soul, whose child Love is,

Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,

More subtle than the parent is

10

Love must not be, but take a body too;

And therefore, what thou wert and who

I bid Love ask, and now

That it assume thy body I allow,

And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

15

Whilst thus to ballast Love I thought,

And so more steadily to

have gone,

13 assume] ∼s I 14 lip] ∼s III

3–4 Cf. Exod. 3. 2 (cited in Acts 7. 30), Job 4. 16, and Ps. 104. 4 (cited in Hebr. 1. 7), whence the proverb (e.g., in 1 Henry IV 3. 3. 33–4), ‘By this fire, that’s God’s angel’. Col. 2. 18 warns: ‘Let no man in his pleasure bear rule over you by a humbleness of mind and worshipping of angels, advancing himself in those things which he never saw, rashly puffed up with his fleshly mind’, and D. himself deprecated the angelolatry of the Roman Church in Serm. 4. 308 (2 Feb. 1623). Here the angelic is analogous to the speaker’s idea of the addressee, imperfectly glimpsed in others’ lower manifestations, whereas in 22–5 it is his own love that is angelic, imperfectly manifested in hers.

6 Contrast the egalitarian platonic attitude of Ecstasy 32: ‘we saw not’.

7–10 Cp. Ecstasy 49–68.

8 else] otherwise.

9 subtle] tenuous. 10–14 Cp. Book 35–6.

13–14 Suggesting that a blazon is imminent, in the tradition not only of Petrarchism, but the biblical S. of S. 4. 1–5, 5. 10–16, 6. 4–7, 7. 1–9.

13 assume] The subjunctive in H40, II, III and 1633 is presumably correct, since Love is the speaker’s child, and therefore under his authority, so that he permits it to settle on the woman’s physical features rather than granting that it does or has done so independently, which latter is what the indicative ‘assumes’ would denote. The poem’s aim is to assert superiority and control by dictating what Love and the woman can and should do.

14 Cp. the prefiguring of the young man’s beauty ‘in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best, / Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow’ in Shakespeare, Sonnets 106.

15–18 Cp. letter to Goodyer, probably of 1608 (1633 p. 368): ‘I have not only cast out all my ballast which nature and time gives, reason and discretion, … but I have over-fraught myself with vice, …’; and SecAn 316–17: ‘For so much knowledge as would over-freight / Another, did but ballast her’.

16 steadily] stably both in direction and continuance. In H49 it is spelt ‘stedelye’, facilitating pronunciation as two syllables, and suggestive of modern ‘staidly’ (etymologically independent, however, and then spelt ‘stayedly’).

With wares which would sink admiratïon,

I saw, I had Love’s pinnace overfraught:

Ev’ry thy hair for Love to work upon

20

Is much too much: some fitter must be sought,

For nor in nothing nor in things

Extreme and scatt’ring bright can Love inhere.

Then, as an angel face and wings

17 wares] warrs II, DC: waues III 22 inhere] inherit II, DC

17 wares which would sink admiration] Mere admiration would be rendered speechless and powerless through excess of objects and their excellence.

18 pinnace] a light vessel used as tender, scout, and landing-craft. Also used of a woman (vulnerable to sexual ‘boarding’ as it is termed by Shakespeare, e.g., Twelfth Night 1. 3. 53–4, All’s Well 5. 3. 211), and so possibly hinting that he is in danger of attributing more to the woman than will justify metaphysical love. over-fraught] overloaded.

19–20 Ev’ry … too much] To attempt the traditional gloating enumeration of the woman’s physical parts is impracticable—another way of saying her beauty is indescribable.

19 Ev’ry thy hair] D. inverts the conventional use of, e.g., Love’s Labour’s Lost 4. 1. 84: ‘thy every part’ (concluding Armado’s doting missive to Jaquenetta). Cp...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Note by the General Editors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Abbreviations
• Epigrams
• Verse letters to friends
• Love-lyrics (‘songs and sonnets')
• Love-elegies
• Satire
• Religion
• Wedding celebrations
• Verse epistles to patronesses
• Commemorations
• The anniversaries
• A probable attribution
• Dubia
• Bibliography
• Index of titles and first lines