A
FUNERALL
ELEGIE.
John Donne
31-2:
And if no peece of Chronicle wee prove
We'll build in sonnets pretty roomes . . .
God's 'last, and lasting'st peece, a song' is of course Moses' song in
Deuteronomy xxxii: 'Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak,' &c.
l. 467. _Such an opinion (in due measure) made, &c. _ The bracket of
_1611_ makes the sense less ambiguous than the commas of _1633_:
Such an opinion, in due measure, made.
According to the habits of old punctuation, 'in due measure' thus
comma'd off might be an adjunct of 'made me . . . invade'. The bracket
shows that the phrase goes with 'opinion'. 'Such an opinion (with
all due reverence spoken),' &c. Donne finds that he is attributing to
himself the same thoughts as God.
A FUNERALL ELEGIE.
l. 2. _to confine her in a marble chest. _ The 'Funerall Elegie' was
probably the first composed of these poems. Elizabeth Drury's parents
erected over her a very elaborate marble tomb.
PAGE =246=, l. 41. _the Affrique Niger. _ Grosart comments on this: 'A
peculiarity generally given to the Nile; and here perhaps not spoken
of our Niger, but of the Nile before it is so called, when, according
to Pliny (_N. H. _ v. 9), after having twice been underground, and the
second time for twenty days' journey, it issues at the spring Nigris. '
Probably Donne had been reading 'A Geographical Historie of Africa
written in Arabicke by John Leo a More, borne in Granada, and brought
up in Barbarie . . .
And if no peece of Chronicle wee prove
We'll build in sonnets pretty roomes . . .
God's 'last, and lasting'st peece, a song' is of course Moses' song in
Deuteronomy xxxii: 'Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak,' &c.
l. 467. _Such an opinion (in due measure) made, &c. _ The bracket of
_1611_ makes the sense less ambiguous than the commas of _1633_:
Such an opinion, in due measure, made.
According to the habits of old punctuation, 'in due measure' thus
comma'd off might be an adjunct of 'made me . . . invade'. The bracket
shows that the phrase goes with 'opinion'. 'Such an opinion (with
all due reverence spoken),' &c. Donne finds that he is attributing to
himself the same thoughts as God.
A FUNERALL ELEGIE.
l. 2. _to confine her in a marble chest. _ The 'Funerall Elegie' was
probably the first composed of these poems. Elizabeth Drury's parents
erected over her a very elaborate marble tomb.
PAGE =246=, l. 41. _the Affrique Niger. _ Grosart comments on this: 'A
peculiarity generally given to the Nile; and here perhaps not spoken
of our Niger, but of the Nile before it is so called, when, according
to Pliny (_N. H. _ v. 9), after having twice been underground, and the
second time for twenty days' journey, it issues at the spring Nigris. '
Probably Donne had been reading 'A Geographical Historie of Africa
written in Arabicke by John Leo a More, borne in Granada, and brought
up in Barbarie . . .
