That right Porphyrian tree which did true logic shew. So clear their colour and divine, The very shade they cast did other lights outshine, On Anacreon continuing a lover in his old age: Love was with thy life entwin'd, Of thine, like Meleager's fate. Th' antiperistasis of age More enflam'd thy amorous rage. 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. Like manna, has the taste of all in it. Thus Donne shews his medicinal knowledge in some encomiastick verses. In every thing there naturally grows A Balsamum to keep it fresh and new, If 'twere not injur'd by extrinsique blows; 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 scholastic, they are not inelegant: This twilight of two years, nor past nor next, Debtor to th' old, nor creditor to th' new, DONNY. Yet more abtruse and profound is Donne's reflection upon Man as a Microcosm. If men be worlds, there is in every one All All the world's riches: and in good men, this 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. For it wanteth one as yet, Then the sun pass through 't twice a year, The sun, which is esteem'd the god of wit. COWLEY. 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, Must of all things most strangely inconstant prove, If 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 though 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, Whilst Pride, the rugged Northern Bear, And And where these are temperate known, The soil's all barren sand, or rocky stone. A Lover, burnt up by his affection, is compared to Egypt; The fate of Egypt I sustain, And never feel the dew of rain COWLEY. COWLEY. 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, For the last tempest of my death Shall sigh out that too, with my breath, That the chaos was harmonised, has been recited of old; but whence the different sounds arose, remained for a modern to discover : The tears of lovers are always of great poetical account; but Donne has extended them into worlds. If the lines are not easily understood, they may be read again: On a round ball A workman, that hath copies by, can lay, An Europe, Afric, 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. On reading the following lines, the reader may perhaps cry out-Confusion everse confounded. Here lies a she sun, and a he moon here, She gives the best light to his sphere, Or each is both, and all, and so They unto one another nothing owe. DONNE. Who 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 Deeds of good men; for by their living here, Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near. 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 And hold the contrast thus in doubt, Think but how soon the market fails, Your sex lives faster than the males; And if to measure age's span, The sober Julian were th' account of man, CLEIVELAND. OF enormous and disgusting hyperboles, these may be examples: Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there; Echo itself dare scarce repeat the sound. THEIR fictions were often violent and unnatural. The fish around her crouded, as they do To the false light that treacherous fisher's shew, As she at first took me : COWLEY. Upon a paper written with the juice of a lemon, and read by the fire: As they sought only for novelty, they did not much enquire whether their allusions were to things high or low, elegant or gross; whether they compared the little to the great, or the great to the little, VOL. I. D Physick |