Why ask for
constancy
when change is the life and law of love?
John Donne
Even the
brilliance and polish of Pope's satire--and Pope's art is nowhere more
perfect than in _The Dunciad_ and the _Imitations of Horace_--cannot
interest us in Lord Hervey, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and
the forgotten poets of an unpoetic age. How then should we be
interested in Elizabeth's fantastic 'Presence', the streets of
sixteenth-century London, and the knavery of pursuivants, presented
with a satiric art which is wonderfully vivid and caustic but still
tentative,--over-emphatic, rough in style and verse, though with a
roughness which is obviously a studied and in a measure successful
effect. The verses upon _Coryats Crudities_ are in their way a
masterpiece of insult veiled as compliment, but it is a rather boyish
and barbarous way.
It is in the lighter of his love verses that Donne's laughable wit is
most obvious and most agile. Whatever one may think of the choice of
subject, and the flame of a young man's lust that burns undisguised
in some of the _Elegies_, it is impossible to ignore the dazzling wit
which neither flags nor falters from the first line to the last. And
in the more graceful and fanciful, the less heated _Songs and Sonets_,
the same wit, gay and insolent, disports itself in a philosophy of
love which must not be taken altogether seriously. Donne at least,
as we shall see, outgrew it. His attitude is very much that of
Shakespeare in the early comedies. But the Petrarchian love, which
Shakespeare treats with light and charming irony, the vows and tears
of Romeo and Proteus, Donne openly scoffs. He is one of Shakespeare's
young men as these were in the flesh and the Inns of Court, and he
tells us frankly what in their youthful cynicism (which is often even
more of a pose than their idealism) they think of love, and constancy,
and women.
Of all miracles, Donne cries, a constant woman is the greatest, of all
strange sights the strangest:
If thou findst one, let mee know,
Such a Pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet doe not, I would not goe,
Though at next doore wee might meet,
Though shee were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet shee
Will bee
False, ere I come, to two, or three.
But is it true that we desire to find her? Donne's answer is _Woman's
Constancy_:
Now thou hast lov'd me one whole day,
To-morrow when thou leav'st what wilt thou say?
She will, like Proteus in the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, have no
dearth of sophistries--but why elaborate them?
Vain lunatique, against these scapes I could
Dispute, and conquer, if I would,
Which I abstaine to doe,
For by to-morrow, I may think so too.
Why ask for constancy when change is the life and law of love?
I can love both fair and brown;
Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays;
Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays.
. . . . . . .
I can love her and her, and you and you,
I can love any so she be not true.
It is not often that the reckless and wilful gaiety of youth masking
as cynicism has been expressed with such ebullient wit as in these
and companion songs. And when he adopts for a time the pose of the
faithful lover bewailing the cruelty of his mistress the sarcastic wit
is no less fertile. It would be difficult to find in the language a
more sustained succession of witty surprises than _The Will_. Others
were to catch these notes from Donne, and Suckling later flutes them
gaily in his lighter fashion, never with the same fullness of wit and
fancy, never with the same ardour of passion divinable through the
audacious extravagances.
But to amuse was by no means the sole aim of Donne's 'wit'; gay humour
touched with fancy and feeling is not its only quality. Donne's 'wit'
has many strands, his humour many moods, and before considering how
these are woven together into an effect that is entirely poetical,
we may note one or two of the soberer strands which run through his
_Letters_, _Epicedes_, and similar poems--descriptive, reflective, and
complimentary.
brilliance and polish of Pope's satire--and Pope's art is nowhere more
perfect than in _The Dunciad_ and the _Imitations of Horace_--cannot
interest us in Lord Hervey, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and
the forgotten poets of an unpoetic age. How then should we be
interested in Elizabeth's fantastic 'Presence', the streets of
sixteenth-century London, and the knavery of pursuivants, presented
with a satiric art which is wonderfully vivid and caustic but still
tentative,--over-emphatic, rough in style and verse, though with a
roughness which is obviously a studied and in a measure successful
effect. The verses upon _Coryats Crudities_ are in their way a
masterpiece of insult veiled as compliment, but it is a rather boyish
and barbarous way.
It is in the lighter of his love verses that Donne's laughable wit is
most obvious and most agile. Whatever one may think of the choice of
subject, and the flame of a young man's lust that burns undisguised
in some of the _Elegies_, it is impossible to ignore the dazzling wit
which neither flags nor falters from the first line to the last. And
in the more graceful and fanciful, the less heated _Songs and Sonets_,
the same wit, gay and insolent, disports itself in a philosophy of
love which must not be taken altogether seriously. Donne at least,
as we shall see, outgrew it. His attitude is very much that of
Shakespeare in the early comedies. But the Petrarchian love, which
Shakespeare treats with light and charming irony, the vows and tears
of Romeo and Proteus, Donne openly scoffs. He is one of Shakespeare's
young men as these were in the flesh and the Inns of Court, and he
tells us frankly what in their youthful cynicism (which is often even
more of a pose than their idealism) they think of love, and constancy,
and women.
Of all miracles, Donne cries, a constant woman is the greatest, of all
strange sights the strangest:
If thou findst one, let mee know,
Such a Pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet doe not, I would not goe,
Though at next doore wee might meet,
Though shee were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet shee
Will bee
False, ere I come, to two, or three.
But is it true that we desire to find her? Donne's answer is _Woman's
Constancy_:
Now thou hast lov'd me one whole day,
To-morrow when thou leav'st what wilt thou say?
She will, like Proteus in the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, have no
dearth of sophistries--but why elaborate them?
Vain lunatique, against these scapes I could
Dispute, and conquer, if I would,
Which I abstaine to doe,
For by to-morrow, I may think so too.
Why ask for constancy when change is the life and law of love?
I can love both fair and brown;
Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays;
Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays.
. . . . . . .
I can love her and her, and you and you,
I can love any so she be not true.
It is not often that the reckless and wilful gaiety of youth masking
as cynicism has been expressed with such ebullient wit as in these
and companion songs. And when he adopts for a time the pose of the
faithful lover bewailing the cruelty of his mistress the sarcastic wit
is no less fertile. It would be difficult to find in the language a
more sustained succession of witty surprises than _The Will_. Others
were to catch these notes from Donne, and Suckling later flutes them
gaily in his lighter fashion, never with the same fullness of wit and
fancy, never with the same ardour of passion divinable through the
audacious extravagances.
But to amuse was by no means the sole aim of Donne's 'wit'; gay humour
touched with fancy and feeling is not its only quality. Donne's 'wit'
has many strands, his humour many moods, and before considering how
these are woven together into an effect that is entirely poetical,
we may note one or two of the soberer strands which run through his
_Letters_, _Epicedes_, and similar poems--descriptive, reflective, and
complimentary.
