"No place so eccentric to me as that I lie just at London, and with those fragmentary recreations I must make shift to recompense the missing of that contentment which your favour opens to me, and my desire provokes me to the kissing of your hands at Polesworth. My daughter Constance is at this time with me, for the emptiness of the town hath made me, who otherwise live upon the alms of others, a housekeeper for a month, and so she is my servant below stairs and my companion above; she was at the table with me when your letter was brought, and I pay her a piece of her petition in doing her this office, to present her service to my Lady Nethersole and her very good sister. But that she is gone to bed two hours before I writ this she should have signed, with such a hand as your daughter Mary did to me, that which I testify for her, that she is as affectionate a servant to them all as their goodness hath created anywhere. Sir, I shall recompense my tediousness in closing mine eyes with a prayer for yours, as for mine own happiness, for I am almost in bed; if it were my last bed, and I upon my last business there, I should not omit to join you with "Your very humble and very thankful 66 August 30, 1611[21].” "J. DONNE. In 1621, upon the death of the Countess of Pembroke, the paraphrase of the Psalms, which she and her illustrious brother had made, fell in MS. into Donne's hands. He a wrote poem on the occasion, ending with these lines: "So though some have, some may some psalms translate, And, till we come th' extemporal song to sing- Who hath translated these translators-may |