Skip to content

— William Blake

Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?

Or wilt thou go ask the Mole:

Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?

Or Love in a golden bowl?

…

Read full poem →

noun

One who, or that which, accelerates.

Know more →

TO WHICH

39 lines
John Donne·1572–1631
✦
Is added divers Copies under his own handnever before in print._ _LONDON_, Printed for _John Marriot_, and areto be sold by _Richard Marriot_ at his shopby _Chancery_ lane end over against the InnerTemple gate. 1650. The initials of the printer, M. F., disappear, and the name of JohnMarriot's son, partner, and successor, Richard, appears along with hisown. There is no great distance between St. Dunstan's Churchyard andthe end of Chancery Lane. With M. F. went the introductory _Printerto the Understanders_, its place being taken by a dedicatory letterin young Donne's most courtly style to William, Lord Craven, Baron ofHamsted-Marsham. In the body of the volume as prepared in 1649 no alteration was made.The 'divers Copies ... never before in print', of which the new editorboasts, were inserted in a couple of sheets (or a sheet and a half,aa, bb incomplete) at the end. These are variously bound up indifferent copies, being sometimes before, sometimes at the end ofthe _Elegies upon the Author_, sometimes before and among them. Theycontain a quite miscellaneous assortment of writings, verse andprose, Latin and English, by, or presumably by, Donne, with a fewcomplimentary verses on Donne taken from Jonson's _Epigrams_. The text of Donne's own writings is carelessly printed. In short,Donne's son did nothing to fix either the text or the canon of hisfather's poems. The former, as it stands in the body of the volumein the editions of 1650-54, he took over from Marriot and M. F. Asregards the latter, he speaks of the 'kindnesse of the Printer, ...adding something too much, lest any spark of this sacred fire mightperish undiscerned'; but he does not condescend to tell us, if heknew, what these unauthentic poems are. He withdrew nothing. In 1654 the poems were published once more, but printed from the sametypes as in 1650. The text of the poems (pp. 1-368) is identical in_1649_, _1650_, _1654_; of the additional matter (pp. 369-392) in_1650_, _1654_. The only change made in the last is on the title-page,where a new publisher's name appears,[11] as in the followingfacsimile: POEMS, _By_ J. D.
✦