ro234
01-18-2003, 03:33 PM
Could anybody write a prose paraphrase of 'Aire and Angels' by John Donne? I've tried but I'm struggling with the second stanza. Here is the poem:
TWICE or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name ;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be.
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too ;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.
Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught ;
Thy every hair for love to work upon
Is much too much ; some fitter must be sought ;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scattering bright, can love inhere ;
Then as an angel face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my love's sphere ;
Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air's and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be.
And here is my paraphrase of the first stanza:
I had loved you (his lover) two or three times before I knew either your face or your name. Similarly, we (humans) often hear the voices of angels, or see them as an insubstantial flame, and we worship them. When I came to the place where you were, I saw nothing, but the nothingness was lovely and glorious. But since my soul has physical limbs, without which it could do nothing, love, which is my soul’s child, should not be more abstract than its parent, but it should also have a body. Therefore, I instructed Love (his love for his lover) to ask what and who you were, and now I have allowed it to take on your body, and to permanently stay in your lip, eye and brow.
I hope somebody can help me with the rest of it.
ro
TWICE or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name ;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be.
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too ;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.
Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught ;
Thy every hair for love to work upon
Is much too much ; some fitter must be sought ;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scattering bright, can love inhere ;
Then as an angel face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my love's sphere ;
Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air's and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be.
And here is my paraphrase of the first stanza:
I had loved you (his lover) two or three times before I knew either your face or your name. Similarly, we (humans) often hear the voices of angels, or see them as an insubstantial flame, and we worship them. When I came to the place where you were, I saw nothing, but the nothingness was lovely and glorious. But since my soul has physical limbs, without which it could do nothing, love, which is my soul’s child, should not be more abstract than its parent, but it should also have a body. Therefore, I instructed Love (his love for his lover) to ask what and who you were, and now I have allowed it to take on your body, and to permanently stay in your lip, eye and brow.
I hope somebody can help me with the rest of it.
ro