Note 15 — POEMS

The three Elegies, XII, XIII, and XIV (7, 8, 9 in the list), must also be assigned to Donne, unless some more suitable candidate can be advanced on really convincing grounds. The first of the three, His parting from her, is so fine a poem that it is difficult to think any unknown poet could have written it. In sincerity and poetic quality it is one of the finest of the Elegies,15 and in this sincerer note, the absence of witty paradox, it differs from poems like The Bracelet and The Perfume and resembles the fine elegy called His Picture and two other pieces that stand somewhat apart from the general tenor of the Elegies, namely, the famous elegy On his Mistris, in which he dissuades her from travelling with him as a page: