a torch) 'have _never_ been _lighted_, it does not
easily take light, but it must be _bruised_ and _beaten_ first; if
it have been lighted and put out, though it cannot take fire _of it
self_, yet it does easily
conceive
fire, if it be presented within any
convenient distance.
John Donne
' _Sermons_ 80. 11. 111; and compare also _Sermons_ 80. 9.
92.
This point is also preserved in the Dutch version:
Maer als ick u sagh sien wat om mijn hertje lagh
En weten wat ick docht (dat Engel noyt en sagh).
M. Legouis in a recent French version has left it ambiguous:
Mais quand j'ai vu que tu voyais mon coeur
Et savais mes pensees au dela du savoir d'un ange.
The MS. reading, 14 'but an Angel', heightens the antithesis.
ll. 27-8. _Perchance as torches which must ready bee
Men light and put out._
'If it' (i.e.
a torch) 'have _never_ been _lighted_, it does not
easily take light, but it must be _bruised_ and _beaten_ first; if
it have been lighted and put out, though it cannot take fire _of it
self_, yet it does easily
conceive
fire, if it be presented within any
convenient distance.
' _Sermons_ 50. 36. 332.
PAGE =38=. A VALEDICTION: OF WEEPING.
ll. 1-9. I have changed the comma at l. 6 to a semicolon, as the first
image, that of the coins, closes here. Chambers places a full stop
at l. 4 'worth', and apparently connects the next two lines with what
follows--wrongly, I think. Finishing the figure of the coins, coined,
stamped, and given their value by her, Donne passes on to a couple of
new images. 'The tears are fruits of much grief; but they are symbols
of more to come. For, as your image perishes in each tear that falls,
so shall we perish, be nothing, when between us rolls the "salt,
estranging sea".'
It is, I suppose, by an inadvertence that Chambers has left 'divers'
unchanged to 'diverse'.
