The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, Volume 7, Part 1: The Holy Sonnets

HSDue

HSDue Textual Introduction As is shown on Figure 2 in the General Textual Introduction (p. lxii), HSDue is the second poem in both the earlier, Group,III sequence of "Diuine Meditations" and in NY3's later replication of that sequence at the beginning of its collection of "Holy Sonnets." In the restructuring that gives rise to the subsequent Group,IjII arrangement, however, the moves to the first position in the sequence and appears there in its first print appearance in A. In B, when the four discarded Group,III sonnets are recovered from H6 and reinstalled in the sequence, HSDue is relocated and again appears in position two, where it remains in all subsequent editions save those of Alford (L), who reproduces the 1633 sequence; Lowell (M), who combines the Holy Sonnets with Corona in a continuously numbered series; Gardner (U), who prints the 1633 sequence; and Shawcross (Z), who essentially follows Gardner (see Figure 6 on p. lxxvi). As the Historical Collation shows, the manuscripts of the poem exhibit a consid, erable amount of variation. The earlier Group,III text has four readings-"was I" in line 2, "thy Image" in line 7, "thus usurpe" in line 9, and "shall see" in line I2-that are altered, respectively, to "I was," "thyne Image," "then vsurpe," and "do see" as the text passes on to NY3 (Group IV); and that these are carried forward into Group I and, later, Group II marks them as deliberate authorial changes. Three members of Group I (B32, 020, and SPI) exhibit the sports "tithes" (for "titles") in line I and "works" (for "worke") in line II; and the entire group gives "vsurpe on [for the nor, mative in]" in line 9. Within Group II the parent,child pair CTI and B7 evince "this [for thy] Spiritt" in line 8, and three Group IIs-DTI, H4, and WN I-trivial, ize "Sonne" to "Sunne" in line 5. Other variants are recorded in the apparatus be' low. A sets HSDue into print from C2 (see p. lxxii above) and thus includes the au, thorial revisions introduced in NY3 and the scribal "usurpe on" in line 9, as well as respelling the manuscripts' "loose" as "lose" in line I4. Into the text received from A, B introduces a full stop after "0 God" in line 2 and-following H6-alters "do see" to "shall see" in line 12. C reprints B's text without change, and D-F's only changes to C involve strengthening commas to semicolons in lines 2 and 3 and adding a medial comma in line 10. G modernizes the spelling of a few words-most notably "chuse" to "choose" in line I3-but otherwise reprints the D-F text exactly. 30, presenting the poem in tandem with HSMade and entitling it The Conclusion, de' rives its text from B or C (see the Textual Introduction to HSMade). That most modern editions position the poem as in B is noted above, and all base their texts on the seventeenth,century prints as welL As is recorded in the list of verbal variants in the moderns below, every editor other than Gosse (72), Gardner 43 HSDue Textual Introduction As is shown on Figure 2 in the General Textual Introduction (p. lxii), HSDue is the second poem in both the earlier, Group-III sequence of "Diuine Meditations" and in NY3'S later replication of that sequence at the beginning of its collection of "Holy Sonnets." In the restructuring that gives rise to the subsequent Group-I/II arrangement, however, the moves to the first position in the sequence and appears there in its first print appearance in A. In B, when the four discarded Group-III sonnets are recovered from H6 and reinstalled in the sequence, HSDue is relocated and again appears in position two, where it remains in all subsequent editions save those of Alford (L), who reproduces the 1633 sequence; Lowell (M), who combines the Holy Sonnets with Corona in a continuously numbered series; Gardner (U), who prints the 1633 sequence; and Shawcross (Z), who essentially follows Gardner (see Figure 6 on p. lxxvi). As the Historical Collation shows, the manuscripts of the poem exhibit a considerable amount of variation. The earlier Group-III text has four readings-"was I" in line 2, "thy Image" in line 7, "thus usurpe" in line 9, and "shall see" in line 12-that are altered, respectively, to "I was," "thyne Image," "then vsurpe," and "do see...