Part 2 (1/2)

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 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.

The person love does to us fit, Like manna, has the taste of all in it.

Thus Donne shows 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; 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 any thing, 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.

Yet more abstruse and profound is Donne's reflection upon man as a microcosm:

If men be worlds, there is in every one 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' equator 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, Then the sun pa.s.s through 't twice a year, The sun, which is esteem'd the G.o.d of wit. COWLEY.

The difficulties which have been raised about ident.i.ty 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 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 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 unciviliz'd as those?

l.u.s.t, the scorching dogstar, 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. COWLEY.

A lover, burnt up by his affection, is compared 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. COWLEY.

The lover supposes his lady acquainted with the ancient laws of augury, and rites of sacrifice: