l. 12. _For I am every dead thing._ I have not thought it right to alter the _1633_ 'every' to the 'very' of _1635-69_. 'Every' has some MS. support, and it is the more difficult reading, though of course 'a very' might easily enough be misread. But I rather think that 'every' expresses what Donne means. He is 'every dead thing' because he is the quintessence of all negations--'absence, darkness, death: things which are not', and more than that, 'the first nothing.' ll. 14-18. _For his art did expresse ... things which are not._ This is a difficult stanza in a difficult poem. I have after considerable hesitation adopted the punctuation of _1719_, which is followed by all the modern editors. This makes 'dull privations' and 'lean emptinesse' expansions of 'nothingnesse'. This is the simpler construction. I am not sure, however, that the punctuation of the earlier editions and of the MSS. may not be correct. In that case 'From dull privations' goes with 'he ruined me'. Milton speaks of 'ruining from Heaven'. 'From me, who was nothing', says Donne, 'Love extracted the very quintessence of nothingness--made me more nothing than I already was. My state was already one of "dull privation" and "lean emptiness", and Love reduced it still further, making me once more the non-entity I was before I was created.' Only Donne could be guilty of such refined and extravagant subtlety. But probably this is to refine too much. There is no example of 'ruining' as an active verb used in this fashion. A feature of the MS. collection from which this poem was probably printed is the omission of stops at the end of the line. In the next verse Donne pushes the annihilation further. Made nothing by Love, by the death of her he loves he is made the elixir (i.e. the quintessence) not now of ordinary nothing, but of 'the first nothing', the nothing which preceded God's first act of creation. The poem turns upon the thought of degrees in nothingness. For 'elixir' as identical with 'quintessence' see Oxf. Eng. Dict., _Elixir_, †† iii. b, and the quotation there, 'A distill'd quintessence, a pure elixar of mischief, pestilent alike to all.' Milton, _Church Govt._