Jesse Sharpe PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

Donne’s Incarnating Words 59
The name in the window can be overcome by simply opening the window. The lover
would still be able to look out, yet she need not see his name, and through this window
could see the face of another. Likewise, her maid could be bought, and a treasonous lover
could step in. The most that the poet can hope for is that his lover would accidentally
glance out the window, see his name, and write that instead of the new love she has found.
The incarnating of himself through a sacramental scripture is insufficient, for, as he says,
‘But glass and lines must be | No means our firm, substantial love to keep’. (61-2)
Although he tries to impart himself onto her glass through his etched name, he knows that
he is ultimately incapable of bringing about the union that he truly desires. Furthermore,
these lines are followed with the closing couplet that reads, ‘Impute this idle talk to that I
go, | For dying men talk often so’. (65-6) This couplet then brings the reader back to the
poet as Christ, and as Jesus spoke of his leaving and the text and sacrament that will bind
his lovers to him, regardless of the length of his journey through death, 44 so too does the
poet equate his journey and the death that may await. The poet is ultimately a false Christ,
who, though through ‘love’s magic’ may be able to create a kind of connection despite
distance, is not divine and the sacrament is purely memorial, and holds no
transubstantiation or taking in of him by his lover.
As ‘Air and Angels’ and ‘The Ecstasy’ have shown that the immaterial must act
through the material, and as ‘The Ecstasy’ and ‘A Valediction: Of my Name’ have shown
that attempts by the poet to incarnate lovers through text may in fact be a fruitless
endeavour for creating a true and lasting communion, so it is with ‘Twickenham Garden’
and ‘A Nocturnal upon Saint Lucy’s Day being the Shortest Day’ that the reader sees the
complete breakdown of the incarnational image and concept as a means to create true
union between two individuals. It is in both poems that the poet creates a lover who
44 1 Corinthians 11.24-5.