No More Learning

PAGE =16=. THE TRIPLE FOOLE.

He is trebly a fool because (1) he loves, (2) he expresses his love in
verse, (3) he thereby enables some one to set the verse to music and
by singing it to re-awaken the passion which composition had lulled to
sleep.


PAGE =17=. LOVERS INFINITENESS.

This song, which is one of the obviously authentic lyrics which is
not included in the _A18_, _N_, _TC_ collection, would seem to have
undergone some revision after its first issue. The version given in
_A25_, from which _Cy_ is copied, would seem to be the original,
at least the readings of ll. 25-6 and ll. 29-30 do not look like
corruptions. The reading 'beget' at l. 25 gives a better rhyme to
'yet' than 'admit'. In l. 29 _A25_ has obviously interchanged 'thine'
and 'mine'. The slightly different version of _JC_ gives the correct
order. The generally careful _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ group has an unusually
faulty text of this poem.
Among other mistakes it reads (with _S96_)
'Thee' for 'them' in l. 32.

'Lovers Infiniteness' is a strange title. It is not found in any
of the MSS. , and possibly should be 'Loves Infiniteness'. Yet the
'Lovers' suits the closing thought:

so we shall
Be one, and one anothers All.

For a poem in obvious imitation of this, see _Appendix C_, p. 439.

ll. 1-11. The rhetoric and rhythm of Donne's elaborate stanzas depends
a good deal on their right punctuation. Mine is an attempt to correct
that of _1633_ without modernizing. The full stop after 'fall' is
obviously an error, and so is, I think, the comma after 'spent'. The
first six lines state in a rapid succession of clauses all that the
poet has done to gain his lady's love. A new thought begins with 'Yet
no more', &c.

l.