Robin Robbins - The Complete Poems of John Donne

Longman Annotated English Poets

GENERAL EDITORS: JOHN BARNARD AND PAUL HAMMOND

FOUNDING EDITOR: F. W. BATESON

LONGMAN ANNOTATED ENGLISH POETS

General Editors: John Barnard and Paul Hammond Founding Editor: F. W. Bateson

Titles available in paperback:

BLAKE: THE COMPLETE POEMS

(Third Edition)

Edited by W. H. Stevenson

DRYDEN: SELECTED POEMS

Edited by Paul Hammond and David Hopkins

THE POEMS OF ANDREW MARVELL

(Revised Edition)

Edited by Nigel Smith

MILTON: PARADISE LOST

(Second Edition)

Edited by Alastair Fowler

MILTON: COMPLETE SHORTER POEMS

(Second Edition)

Edited by John Carey

SPENSER: THE FAERIE QUEENE

(Revised Second Edition)

Edited by A. C. Hamilton

TENNYSON: A SELECTED EDITION

(Revised Edition)

Edited by Christopher Ricks

John Donne, after Isaac Oliver (National Portrait Gallery, London, D21407)

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF
JOHN DONNE

Epigrams, Verse Letters to Friends, Love-Lyrics,

Love-Elegies, Satire, Religion Poems,

Wedding Celebrations, Verse Epistles to Patronesses,

Commemorations and Anniversaries

EDITED BY
ROBIN ROBBINS

First published 2008 by Pearson Education Limited

First edition published 2008

Revised edition published 2010

Published 2013 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 2008, 2010, Taylor & Francis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices

Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein.

ISBN 13: 978-1-4082-3124-1 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A CIP catalog record for this book can be obtained from the Library of Congress

Set in 10.5/11.5pt Bembo by 35

Contents

Longman Annotated English Poets was launched in 1965 with the publication of Kenneth Allotts edition of The Poems of Matthew Arnold. F. W. Bateson wrote that the new series is the first designed to provide university students and teachers, and the general reader with complete and fully annotated editions of the major English poets. That remains the aim of the series, and Batesons original vision of its policy remains essentially the same. Its concern is primarily with the meaning of the extant texts in their various contexts. The two other principles of the series were that the text should be modernised and the poems printed as far as possible in the order in which they were composed.

These broad principles still govern the series. Its primary purpose is to provide an annotated text giving the reader any necessary contextual information. However, flexibility in the detailed application has proved necessary in the light of experience and the needs of a particular case (and each poet is, by definition, a particular case).

First, proper glossing of a poets vocabulary has proved essential and not something which can be taken for granted. Second, modernisation has presented difficulties, which have been resolved pragmatically, trying to reach a balance between sensitivity to the text in question and attention to the needs of a modern reader. Thus, to modernise Brownings text has a double redundancy: Victorian conventions are very close to modern conventions, and Browning had firm ideas on punctuation. Equally, to impose modern pointing on the ambiguities of Marvell would create a misleading clarity. Third, in the very early days of the series Bateson hoped that editors would be able in many cases to annotate a textus receptus. That has not always been possible, and where no accepted text exists or where the text is controversial, editors have been obliged to go back to the originals and create their own text. The series has taken, and will continue to take, the opportunity not only of providing thorough annotations not available elsewhere, but also of making important scholarly textual contributions where necessary. A case in point is the edition of The Poems of Tennyson by Christopher Ricks, the second edition of which (1987) takes into account a full collation of the Trinity College Manuscripts, not previously available for an edition of this kind. Yet the series primary purpose remains annotation.

The requirements of a particular author take precedence over principle. Where Ricks rightly decided that Tennysons reader needs to be given the circumstances of composition, the attitude to Tennyson and his circle, allusions, and important variants, a necessary consequence was the exclusion of twentieth-century critical responses. Milton, however, is a very different case. John Carey and Alastair Fowler, looking to the needs of their readers, undertook synopses of the main lines of the critical debate over Miltons poetry. Finally, chronological ordering by date of composition will almost always have a greater or lesser degree of speculation and arbitrariness. This edition of Donne arranges the poems chronologically within genre, with the exception of the lyrics. It is impossible to determine the precise date of most of these: they have therefore been arranged alphabetically.

John Barnard
Paul Hammond

This edition could not have appeared without the still-generous provisions of Oxford University for sabbatical study-leave. The Faculty of English paid for the acquisition of photocopies of manuscripts out of the News International Fund, so even buyers of the Sun may be said to have partly financed the work. For the prompt furnishing of legible facsimiles I am obliged to the following: the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the British Library, London; the Cambridge University Library; the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth; Trinity College, Dublin; the Queens College, Oxford; Trinity College, Cambridge; the North Yorkshire County Record Office, Northallerton; the Leicestershire County Record Office; Harvard University Library; the Berg Collection, New York Public Library; the Folger Shakespeare Memorial Library, Washington DC. I am especially grateful to Lou Burnard, Assistant Director of the Oxford University Computing Services, for generously imparting his transcription of the 1633 edition of Donnes poems, and to the staff of the Bodleian, especially in Duke Humfreys Library, for coping not just patiently but helpfully with multifarious requests. I owe a great debt to Wadham College, Oxford, for allowing the scope to pursue this work, and, in recent years, support for the buying of necessary books. I am particularly grateful to its librarian, Sandra Bailey, for granting unusual licence in the borrowing of books. Finally, I have been glad of the wisdom and tact of the series editors, Professor John Barnard and Professor Paul Hammond, in drawing my attention to gaps and redundancies, infelicities and errors: those which remain despite our best efforts I can confidently claim as my own.