Didn’t I give you copies of my Brief Guide to Punctuation? Didn’t you read it? Wow, most of you seem to have a block about standard punctuation around quotation marks and parenthetical citations. Please remind me and we can discuss this on Friday.

We’ll discuss this in class on November 5th.

Folks, I am not going to PENN on November 2nd. We will hold class — if you can get to campus. I think a rousing analysis of more Donne poetry may put us all in a better mood.

Happy Halloween.

In response to his ill-considered marriage, JD supposedly chalked this witticism on a back kitchen door: “John Donne, Anne Donne, un-done.”

Hey, ho, add “The Undertaking” to the Donne poems you read for Wednesday the 24th. It will repay a careful reading.

THE UNDERTAKING

I HAVE done one braver thing
Than all the Worthies did ;
And yet a braver thence doth spring,
Which is, to keep that hid.

It were but madness now to impart
The skill of specular stone,
When he, which can have learn’d the art
To cut it, can find none.

So, if I now should utter this,
Others—because no more
Such stuff to work upon, there is—
Would love but as before.

But he who loveliness within
Hath found, all outward loathes,
For he who color loves, and skin,
Loves but their oldest clothes.

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

And if this love, though placèd 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.

Here’s a link to the librivox reading of Lady Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia & Amphilanthus.

Home of Sir Philip Sidney, then to his brother Robert Sidney and his daughter Lady Mary Wroth (before her marriage).

After Mary’s marriage to Robert Wroth in 1604 she moved to Loughton Hall, now a home for the elderly.