But the _Nocturnall_ is a sincerer and profounder poem than _Twicknam Garden_, and it is more difficult to imagine it the expression of a conventional sentiment. Mr. Gosse, and there is no higher authority when it comes to the interpretation of Donne's character and mind, rightly, I think, suggests that the death of the lady addressed is assumed, not actual, but he connects the poem with Donne's earlier and troubled loves. 'So also in a most curious ode, the _Nocturnal_ ..., amid fireworks of conceit, he calls his mistress dead and protests that his hatred has grown cold at last.' But I can find no note of bitterness, active or spent, in the song. It _might_ have been written to Ann More. It is a highly metaphysical yet sombre and sincere description of the emptiness of life without love. The critics have, I think, failed somewhat to reckon with this stratum in Donne's songs, of poems Petrarchian in convention but with a Petrarchianism coloured by Donne's realistic temper and impatient wit. Any interpretation of so enigmatical a poem must be conjectural, but before one denied too positively that its subject was Lady Bedford--perhaps her illness in 1612--one would need to answer two questions, how far could a conventional passion inspire a strain so sincere, and what was Donne's feeling for Lady Bedford and hers for him? Poetry is the language of passion, but the passion which moves the poet most constantly is the delight of making poetry, and very little is sufficient to quicken the imagination to its congenial task. Our soberer minds are apt to think that there must be an actual, particular experience behind every sincere poem. But history refutes the idea of such a simple relation between experience and art. No poet will sing of love convincingly who has never loved, but that experience will suffice him for many and diverse webs of song and drama. Without pursuing the theme, it is sufficient for the moment to recall that in the fashion of the day Spenser's sonnets were addressed to Lady Carey, not to his wife; that it was to Idea or to Anne Goodere that Drayton wrote so passionate a poem as Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part; and that we know very little of what really lies behind Shakespeare's profound and plangent sonnets, weave what web of fancy we will.