The sonnet _On the Blessed Virgin Mary_ (19 on the list), 'In that
O Queene of Queenes, thy birth was free,' is included among Donne's
poems in _1635_ and in _B_, _O'F_, _S_, _S96_.
O Queene of Queenes, thy birth was free,' is included among Donne's
poems in _1635_ and in _B_, _O'F_, _S_, _S96_.
John Donne
217; _Letters_, 1651, p.
67) he speaks
of some verses written to himself: 'They must needs be an excellent
exercise of your wit, which speak so well of so ill. ' That the
Countess of Bedford could have written 'Death be not proud', we cannot
prove in the absence of other examples of her work; that if she could
she did, is very likely. She had probably asked Donne for some verses
on the death of her friend. He replied with 'Death I recant'. The
tone, which if not pagan is certainly not Christian, while it is
untouched by any real feeling for the subject of the elegy, displeased
her, and she replied in lines at once more ardent and more resigned.
At any rate, whether by Lady Bedford or not, the poem is not like
Donne's work, and the external evidence is against its being his. _B_
attributes it to 'F. B. ', i. e. Francis Beaumont. It is right, on the
other hand, to point out that Donne opens one of the _Holy Sonnets_
with the exclamation used here:
Death be not proud!
I have left the question of authorship an open one. Personally I
cannot bring myself to think that it is Donne's.
The sonnet _On the Blessed Virgin Mary_ (19 on the list), 'In that
O Queene of Queenes, thy birth was free,' is included among Donne's
poems in _1635_ and in _B_, _O'F_, _S_, _S96_. There is little doubt
that it is not Donne's but Henry Constable's. It is found in a series
of Spiritual Sonnets by H. C. , in Harl. MS. 7553, f. 41, which were
first published by T. Park in _Heliconia_, ii. 1815, and unless all
of these are to be given to Donne this cannot. It is not in his style,
and Donne more than once denies the Immaculate Conception in the
full Catholic sense of the doctrine. Nothing could more expressly
contradict this sonnet than the lines in the _Second Anniversarie_:
Where thou shalt see the blessed Mother-maid
Joy in not being that, which men have said.
Where she is exalted more for being good,
Then for her interest of Mother-hood.
Of the next three poems (20, 21, 22 on the list), the second, the
_Ode_ beginning 'Vengeance will sit above our faults', seems to me
very doubtful, although on second thoughts I have re-transferred
it from the Appendix to the place among the _Divine Poems_ which
it occupies in _1635_. Against its authenticity are the following
considerations: (1) It is not at all in the style of Donne's other
specifically religious poems. The elevated, stoical tone is more like
Jonson's occasional religious pieces than Donne's personal, tormented,
Scholastic _Divine Poems_.
of some verses written to himself: 'They must needs be an excellent
exercise of your wit, which speak so well of so ill. ' That the
Countess of Bedford could have written 'Death be not proud', we cannot
prove in the absence of other examples of her work; that if she could
she did, is very likely. She had probably asked Donne for some verses
on the death of her friend. He replied with 'Death I recant'. The
tone, which if not pagan is certainly not Christian, while it is
untouched by any real feeling for the subject of the elegy, displeased
her, and she replied in lines at once more ardent and more resigned.
At any rate, whether by Lady Bedford or not, the poem is not like
Donne's work, and the external evidence is against its being his. _B_
attributes it to 'F. B. ', i. e. Francis Beaumont. It is right, on the
other hand, to point out that Donne opens one of the _Holy Sonnets_
with the exclamation used here:
Death be not proud!
I have left the question of authorship an open one. Personally I
cannot bring myself to think that it is Donne's.
The sonnet _On the Blessed Virgin Mary_ (19 on the list), 'In that
O Queene of Queenes, thy birth was free,' is included among Donne's
poems in _1635_ and in _B_, _O'F_, _S_, _S96_. There is little doubt
that it is not Donne's but Henry Constable's. It is found in a series
of Spiritual Sonnets by H. C. , in Harl. MS. 7553, f. 41, which were
first published by T. Park in _Heliconia_, ii. 1815, and unless all
of these are to be given to Donne this cannot. It is not in his style,
and Donne more than once denies the Immaculate Conception in the
full Catholic sense of the doctrine. Nothing could more expressly
contradict this sonnet than the lines in the _Second Anniversarie_:
Where thou shalt see the blessed Mother-maid
Joy in not being that, which men have said.
Where she is exalted more for being good,
Then for her interest of Mother-hood.
Of the next three poems (20, 21, 22 on the list), the second, the
_Ode_ beginning 'Vengeance will sit above our faults', seems to me
very doubtful, although on second thoughts I have re-transferred
it from the Appendix to the place among the _Divine Poems_ which
it occupies in _1635_. Against its authenticity are the following
considerations: (1) It is not at all in the style of Donne's other
specifically religious poems. The elevated, stoical tone is more like
Jonson's occasional religious pieces than Donne's personal, tormented,
Scholastic _Divine Poems_.
