No More Learning

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'. I cannot think there is any reference to 'a
diver in the pearly seas'. Grolier and the Dutch poet divide as here:

Laet voor uw aengesicht mijn trouwe tranen vallen,
Want van dat aengensicht ontfangen sy uw' munt,
En rijsen tot de waerd dies' uwe stempel gunt
Bevrucht van uw' gedaent: vrucht van veel' ongevallen,
Maer teekenen van meer, daer ghy valt met den traen,
Die van u swanger was, en beyde wy ontdaen
Verdwijnen, soo wy op verscheiden oever staen.


PAGE =39=. LOVES ALCHYMIE.

l. 7. _th'Elixar_: i. e. 'the Elixir Vitae', which heals all disease
and indefinitely prolongs life. It is sometimes identified with the
philosopher's stone, which transmutes metals to gold.