from verses that seize the ear and hold it with intense melody
to others that fall dull as schoolmaster's jests. One begins,
how delightfully--

"I long to talk with some old lover's ghost
Who died before the god of love was born"--

while the next stanza says of the young god that--

"His office was indulgently to fit
Actives to passives; correspondency
Only his subject was . . ."

This is metaphysical verse in its very article. But elsewhere
Donne is easily master of his new music and makes us admit
its fantasy, as in his song--

"Go, and catch a falling star."

And we have to admit that if lyric was to pass through a second
transformation, and assimilate reflective ideas to the primary
emotions, it was bound to experiment here and at this stage
as Donne experimented. Only, being what he was, proverbial
for his wit, quick of thought and subtle to a degree, it is
strange that he was not able to perceive where the line between
the song of passion confessed and the doctor's diagnosis should
be drawn. But he failed as other poets had done who tried
to use in their verse, not the philosophical results of thought
(for that need not be so fatal) but the processes themselves.
Moreover, the fallacy by which he suffered was one that was
in the air itself when he began to write, a very young man,
much concerned to find the theoretic equation between his
own amorous superpropensities and his struggling religious
instincts--

"As our blood labours to beget
Spirits as like souls as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtile knot which makes us man.

So must pure lovers soul descend
T' affections and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend
Else a great praise in prison lies.

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