No More Learning

Marlowe, _Hero and Leander_: _First Sestiad_ 219-222.

For 'deale withall' compare:

For ye have much adoe to deale withal.
Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, VI. i. 10.


PAGE =37=. THE DREAME.

ll. 1-10. _Deare love, for nothing lesse then thee
Would I have broke this happy dreame,
It was a theame
For reason, much too strong for phantasie,
Therefore thou wak'dst me wisely; yet
My Dreame thou brok'st not, but continued'st it,
Thou art so truth, that thoughts of thee suffice,
To make dreames truths; and fables histories;
Enter these armes, &c. _

I have left the punctuation of the first stanza unaltered. The sense
is clear and any modernization alters the rhetoric. Chambers places a
semicolon after 'dreame' and a full stop after 'phantasie'. The
last is certainly wrong, for the statement 'It was a theme', &c. is
connected not with what precedes, but with what follows, 'Therefore
thou waked'st me wisely.
' In like manner Chambers's full stop
after 'but continued'st it' breaks the close connexion with the two
following lines, which are really an adverbial clause of explanation
or reason. 'My dream thou brokest not, but continued'st it,' for 'Thou
art so truth', &c. A full stop might more justifiably be placed after
'histories', but the semicolon is more in Donne's manner.

l. 7. _Thou art so truth. _ The evidence of the MSS. shows that both
'truth' and 'true' were current versions and explains the alteration
of _1635-69_. But 'truth' is both the more difficult reading and
the more subtle expression of Donne's thought; 'true' is the obvious
emendation of less metaphysical copyists and editors. Donne's 'Love'
is not true as opposed to false only; she is 'truth' as opposed
to dreams or phantasms or aught that partakes of unreality. She is
essentially truth as God is: 'Respondeo dicendum quod . . . veritas
invenitur in intellectu, secundum quod apprehendit rem ut est; et
in re, secundum quod habet esse conformabile intellectui. Hoc autem
maxime invenitur in Deo. Nam esse eius non solum est conforme suo
intelligere; et suum intelligere est mensura et causa omnis alterius
esse, et omnis alterius intellectus; et ipse est suum esse et
intelligere.