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Donne's A NOCTURNAL UPON S. LUCY'S DAY, BEING THE SHORTEST DAY.(John Donne's elegiac poetry)(Critical Essay)

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From: The Explicator
Date: 19940622
Author:EDGECOMBE, RODNEY STENNING

On June 11, 1594, Edmund Spenser married Elizabeth Boyle in Ireland. Various external factors might have prompted the selection of that date, but it is at least probable that the poet himself chose the day for its symbolic resonance. The feast of St. Barnabas (June 11) coincided with the summer solstice in the old calendar, and Spenser stresses this fact in his Epithalamion written for the occasion:

This day the sun is in his chiefest height,

With Barnaby the bright,

From whence declining daily by degrees,

He somewhat loseth of his heat and light,

When once ...

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