l. 24. _All wealth alchimie_: i.e. imposture or 'glittering dross' (O.E.D.). 'Though the show of it were glorious, the substance of it was dross, and nothing but alchymy and cozenage.' Harrington, _Orlando Furioso_ (1591). See also poem cited II. p. 11. PAGE =12=. THE INDIFFERENT. l. 7. _dry corke._ Cork was a favourite metaphor for what was dry and withered. To our taste it is hardly congruous with love or tragic poetry, perhaps because of its associations. 'Bind fast his corky arms,' says Cornwall, speaking of Gloucester (_King Lear_, III. vii. 31), but Shakespeare seems to have taken the epithet from Harsnett's _Declaration of Egregious Popishe Impostures, &c._ (1603): 'It would pose all the cunning exorcists ... to teach an old corkie woman to writhe, tumble, curvet,' c. 5, p. 23. PAGE =13=. LOVES USURY. l. 5. _My body raigne._ Grosart and Chambers substitute 'range', from _1635-69_. Perhaps they are right; but I feel doubtful. All the best MSS. read 'raigne.' Donne contrasts the reign of love and the reign of lust on the body, and frankly declares for the latter. A lover might range, 'I can love both fair and brown,' but no lover could mistake by the way The maid, and tell the lady of that delay. Adonis, with graver rhetoric, states the other side of Donne's paradoxical thesis: Love comforteth like sunshine after rain, But Lust's effect is tempest after sun; Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain, Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done; Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies; Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies. Shakespeare, _Venus and Adonis_, v. cxxxiv. ll. 13-16. Chambers and Grosart have adopted, with some modification of punctuation, the reading of the 1633-54 editions, and the lines are frequently quoted as printed by Chambers: Only let me love none; no, not the sport From country-grass to confitures of court, Or city's quelque-choses; let not report My mind transport. I confess I find it difficult to attach any exact meaning to them. Are there any instances of 'sport' thus used apparently for 'sportive lady'? The difficulty seems to me to have arisen from the accidental dropping in the 1633 edition of the semicolon after 'sport', which the 1669 editor rightly restored. What Donne means by 'the sport' is clear enough from other passages, e.g. 'the short scorn of a bridegroom's play' (_Loves Alchimie_), 'as she would man should despise the sport' (_Farewell to Love_). The prayer that report _may_ ('let', not 'let not') carry his roving fancy from one to another, is in keeping with the whole tenor of the poem. The Grolier Club edition has the punctuation I have given, which I had adopted before I saw that edition. I find it difficult to attach any meaning to 'let not report'. PAGE =14=. THE CANONIZATION.