As these lines stand in the old
editions
they are
unintelligible:
Because that other curse of being short,
And only for a minute made to be
Eager, desires to raise posterity.
unintelligible:
Because that other curse of being short,
And only for a minute made to be
Eager, desires to raise posterity.
John Donne
Yea Love oft fills mens breasts with melting snow
Drowning their Love-sick minds in flouds of woe.
What is Love, water then? it may be soe;
But hee saith trueth, that saith hee doth not knowe.
FINIS.
PAGE =71=. FAREWELL TO LOVE.
l. 12. _His highnesse &c. _ 'Presumably his highness was made of gilt
gingerbread. ' Chambers. See Jonson, _Bartholomew Fair_, III. i.
ll. 28-30.
As these lines stand in the old editions they are
unintelligible:
Because that other curse of being short,
And only for a minute made to be
Eager, desires to raise posterity.
Grosart prints:
Because that other curse of being short
And--only-for-a-minute-made-to-be--
Eager desires to raise posterity.
This and the note which he appends I find more incomprehensible than
the old text. This is his note: 'The whole sense then is: Unless
Nature decreed this in order that man should despise it, (just) as
she made it short, that man might for that reason also despise a
sport that was only for a minute made to be eager desires to raise
posterity. ' Surely this is Abracadabra!
What has happened is, I believe, this: Donne here, as elsewhere, used
an obsolescent word, viz. 'eagers', the verb, meaning 'sharpens'. The
copyist did not recognize the form, took 'desire' for the verb, and
made 'eager' the adjectival complement to 'be', changing 'desire'
to 'desires' as predicate to 'curse'. What Donne had in mind was
the Aristotelian doctrine that the desire to beget children is
an expression of man's craving for immortality. The most natural
function, according to Aristotle, of every living thing which is not
maimed in any way is to beget another living thing like itself, that
so it may partake of what is eternal and divine. This participation
is the goal of all desire, and of all natural activity. But perishable
individuals cannot partake of the immortal and divine by continuous
existence. Nothing that is perishable can continue always one and the
same individual. Each, therefore, participates as best he may, some
more, some less; remaining the same in a way, i. e. in the species, not
in the individual.
