54-9:
As on the land while here the ocean gains,
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
As on the land while here the ocean gains,
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
John Donne
The
old physical theories were retained for literary purposes long after
they had been exploded.
l. 29. _They say, the sea, when it gaines, loseth too. _ 'But we passe
from the circumstance of the time, to a second, that though Christ
thus despised by the _Gergesens_, did, in his Justice, depart from
them; yet, as the sea gaines in one place, what it loses in another,
his abundant mercy builds up more in _Capernaum_, then his Justice
throwes downe among the _Gergesens_: Because they drave him away, in
Judgement he went from them, but in Mercy he went to the others, who
had not intreated him to come. ' _Sermons_ 80. 11. 103.
'They flatly say that he eateth into others dominions, as the sea doth
into the land, not knowing that in swallowing a poore Iland as big as
Lesbos he may cast up three territories thrice as big as Phrygia: for
what the sea winneth in the marshe, it looseth in the sand. ' Lyly,
_Midas_ v. 2. 17.
Compare also Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part 2, Sect 2, Mem. 3.
Pope has borrowed the conceit from Donne in _An Essay on Criticism_,
ll.
54-9:
As on the land while here the ocean gains,
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
l. 34. _For, graves our trophies are, and both deaths dust. _ The
modern printing of this as given in the Grolier Club edition makes
this line clearer--'both Deaths' dust. ' 'Graves are our trophies,
their dust is not our dust but the dust of the elder and the younger
death, i. e. sin and the physical or carnal death which sin brought
in its train. ' Chambers's 'death's dust' means, I suppose, the same
thing, but one can hardly speak of 'both death'.
PAGE =281=, ll. 57-8. _this forward heresie,
That women can no parts of friendship bee. _
Montaigne refers to the same heresy in speaking of 'Marie de Gournay
le Jars, ma fille d'alliance, et certes aymee de moy beaucoup plus que
paternellement, et enveloppee en ma retraitte et solitude comme l'une
des meilleures parties de mon propre estre. Je ne regarde plus qu'elle
au monde. Si l'adolescence peut donner presage, cette ame sera quelque
jour capable des plus belles choses et entre autres de la perfection
de _cette tressaincte amitie ou nous ne lisons point que son sexe ait
pu monter encores_: la sincerite et la solidite de ses moeurs y sont
desja bastantes. ' _Essais_ (1590), ii.
old physical theories were retained for literary purposes long after
they had been exploded.
l. 29. _They say, the sea, when it gaines, loseth too. _ 'But we passe
from the circumstance of the time, to a second, that though Christ
thus despised by the _Gergesens_, did, in his Justice, depart from
them; yet, as the sea gaines in one place, what it loses in another,
his abundant mercy builds up more in _Capernaum_, then his Justice
throwes downe among the _Gergesens_: Because they drave him away, in
Judgement he went from them, but in Mercy he went to the others, who
had not intreated him to come. ' _Sermons_ 80. 11. 103.
'They flatly say that he eateth into others dominions, as the sea doth
into the land, not knowing that in swallowing a poore Iland as big as
Lesbos he may cast up three territories thrice as big as Phrygia: for
what the sea winneth in the marshe, it looseth in the sand. ' Lyly,
_Midas_ v. 2. 17.
Compare also Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part 2, Sect 2, Mem. 3.
Pope has borrowed the conceit from Donne in _An Essay on Criticism_,
ll.
54-9:
As on the land while here the ocean gains,
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
l. 34. _For, graves our trophies are, and both deaths dust. _ The
modern printing of this as given in the Grolier Club edition makes
this line clearer--'both Deaths' dust. ' 'Graves are our trophies,
their dust is not our dust but the dust of the elder and the younger
death, i. e. sin and the physical or carnal death which sin brought
in its train. ' Chambers's 'death's dust' means, I suppose, the same
thing, but one can hardly speak of 'both death'.
PAGE =281=, ll. 57-8. _this forward heresie,
That women can no parts of friendship bee. _
Montaigne refers to the same heresy in speaking of 'Marie de Gournay
le Jars, ma fille d'alliance, et certes aymee de moy beaucoup plus que
paternellement, et enveloppee en ma retraitte et solitude comme l'une
des meilleures parties de mon propre estre. Je ne regarde plus qu'elle
au monde. Si l'adolescence peut donner presage, cette ame sera quelque
jour capable des plus belles choses et entre autres de la perfection
de _cette tressaincte amitie ou nous ne lisons point que son sexe ait
pu monter encores_: la sincerite et la solidite de ses moeurs y sont
desja bastantes. ' _Essais_ (1590), ii.
