But with what a jar the next stanza breaks on
heart, mind, and ear!
Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and I[72] their map, who lie
Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown
That this is my south-west discovery,
_Per fretum febris_--by these straits to die;--
Here, in the midst of comparing himself to a map, and his physicians to
cosmographers consulting the map, he changes without warning into a
navigator whom they are trying to follow upon the map as he passes
through certain straits--namely, those of the fever--towards his
south-west discovery, Death. Grotesque as this is, the absurdity deepens
in the end of the next stanza by a return to the former idea. He is
alternately a map and a man sailing on the map of himself. But the first
half of the stanza is lovely: my reader must remember that the region of
the West was at that time the Land of Promise to England.
I joy that in these straits I see my West;
For though those currents yield return to none,
What shall my West hurt me? As west and east
In all flat maps (and I am one) are one,
So death doth touch the resurrection.
It is hardly worth while, except for the strangeness of the phenomenon,
to spend any time in elucidating this. Once more a map, he is that of the
two hemispheres, in which the east of the one touches the west of the
other.
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