what a miracle she was.

In _The Funeral_ he returns to the same theme:

Whoever comes to shroud me do not harm
Nor question much
That subtle wreath of hair that crowns my arm;
The mystery, the sign you must not touch,
For 'tis my outward soul.

In this poem, however, he finds less consolation than before in the too
miraculous nobleness of their love:

Whate'er she meant by it, bury it with me,
For since I am
Love's martyr, it might breed idolatry,
If into other hands these relics came;
As 'twas humility
To afford to it all that a soul can do,
So, 'tis some bravery,
That, since you would have none of me, I bury some of you.

In _The Blossom_ he is in a still more earthly mood, and declares that, if
his mistress remains obdurate, he will return to London, where he will
find a mistress:

As glad to have my body as my mind.

_The Primrose_ is another appeal for a less intellectual love:

Should she
Be more than woman, she would get above
All thought of sex, and think to move
My heart to study her, and not to love.

If we turn back to _The Undertaking_, however, we find Donne boasting once
more of the miraculous purity of a love which it would be useless to
communicate to other men, since, there being no other mistress to love in
the same kind, they "would love but as before." Hence he will keep the
tale a secret:

If, as I have, you also do,
Virtue attir'd in woman see,
And dare love that, and say so too,
And forget the He and She.

And if this love, though placed so,
From profane men you hide,
Which will no faith on this bestow,
Or, if they do, deride:

Then you have done a braver thing
Than all the Worthies did;
And a braver thence will spring,
Which is, to keep that hid.

It seems to me, in view of this remarkable series of poems, that it is
useless to look in Donne for a single consistent attitude to love. His
poems take us round the entire compass of love as the work of no other
English poet--not even, perhaps, Browning's--does. He was by destiny the
complete experimentalist in love in English literature. He passed through
phase after phase of the love of the body only, phase after phase of the
love of the soul only, and ended as the poet of the perfect marriage. In
his youth he was a gay--but was he ever really gay?--free-lover, who sang
jestingly:

How happy were our sires in an