After the ape who, thus prevented, flew.

This house thus battered down, the Soul pos

sessed a new.

L.

And whether by this change she lose or win,

She comes out next, where the ape would have gone in.
Adam and Eve had mingled bloods, and now,

Like chymique's equal fires, her temperate womb
Had stewed and formed it, and part did become
A spongy liver, that did richly allow,
Like a free conduit on a high hill's brow,
Life-keeping moisture unto every part;
Part hardened itself to a thicker heart,
Whose busy furnaces life's spirits do impart.

LI.

Another part became the well of sense,

The tender well-armed feeling brain, from whence
Those sinewy strings 1 which do our bodies tie

1

Are ravelled out, and, fast there by one end,
Did this Soul limbs, these limbs a soul attend;
And now they joined, keeping some quality
Of every past shape; she knew treachery,
Rapine, deceit, and lust, and ills enow

To be a woman: Themech she is now,

Sister and wife to Cain, Caïn, that first did plough.

1 sinew strings, 1669.

LII.

Whoe'er thou beest, that read'st this sullen writ
Which just so much courts thee as thou dost it,
Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me
Why ploughing, building, ruling, and the rest,
Or most of those arts whence our lives are blest,
By cursed Caïn's race invented be,

And blest Seth vexed us with astronomy.
There's nothing simply good nor ill alone;
Of every quality comparison

The only measure is, and judge, opiniön.

NOTES.

NOTES.

THE following notes consist mainly of what Donne well calls “those unconcerning things, matters of fact." I have made little attempt to throw light on the obscurities of Donne's verse, or to direct attention to its beauties. The attentive reader who is also a lover of poetry does not require a commentator to explain what his own wit may solve, or to point out what he may already have observed. The notes for the most part serve only to elucidate remote allusions, and to give brief accounts of the occasions on which some of the poems were written, as well as of the personages to whom some of them were addressed. By showing the relation of his poems to the course of his life, their value becomes apparent as material for the biography of Donne's perplexed and intricate soul.

Song.

Page 5.

This song is sometimes ascribed to Francis Beaumont and printed in his works.

The Undertaking.

Page 7.

"It were but madness now t' impart

The skill of specular stone," etc.

That is, it were mere folly to instruct in an art of which the material is no longer to be found.

Under the term "specular stone" various sorts of translucent stone, such as alabaster and mica, seem to have been included. The lapis specularis was used in the time of Augustus for the filling of windows, and Harrison, in his excellent description of England, printed in