O.K., my feeling is that - given the prevailing prosodic aesthetic on this site, which puts us pretty close to Pope's Augustan aesthetic - if Donne had posted his Satire on TDE he would have been told that his meter "is all over the shop". And before the week was out his poem would have looked pretty much like Pope's version.
But does this mean that Donne is "wrong" to write like this? Or is our internalised metrical template, our "expectation" of fairly regular metrical pattern, preventing us from enjoying Donne's syncopated, jazzy style? Because that's how I read Donne, like a jazz musician who has wandered in to a classical recital. And if you read him as he comes, letting the rhythms take care of themselves without expectation of what they "should" be doing, I find no problem with reading even these knotty satires. As Coleridge said, Donne's muse trots on a dromedary, rather than gallops on a race horse. But it still moves you along.
The Timothy Murphy of Donne's day was Ben Jonson, who also wrote in the high classical style on blocks of granite. Jonson is famously noted for having told Drummond of Hawthornden that "Donne deserved hanging for not keeping of accent." And yet Jonson could also write an epigramme such as this:
X C V I.
To John Donne.
Who shall doubt, Donne, where I a Poet be,
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTWhen I dare send my Epigrams to thee?
That so alone canst judge, so' alone do'st make:
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTAnd, in thy censures, evenly, do'st take
As free simplicity, to disavow,
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTAs thou hast best Authority, t' allow.
Read all I send: and, if I find but one
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTMark'd by thy hand, and with the better Stone,
My Title's seal'd. Those that for Claps do write,
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTLet Pui'nees, Porters, Players praise delight,
And, till they burst, their Backs, like Asses load:
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTA Man should seek great glory, and not broad.
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This shows the level of Jonson's regard for Donne. And this raises an interesting question for us regarding latitude in metrical verse.
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Mark Allinson
http://markallinson.netpublish.net/