Note 1. Whoe’er she be. This, perhaps, the best known of Crashaw’s poems, though it ill-deserves to be, in comparison with two among the other of his pieces included in this volume; it originally appeared in The Delights of the Muses, 1646, The volume was reprinted in 1648 and 1670. The text here followed is that of Dr. Grosart (Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, Fuller Worthies’ Library) from the 1648 ed., with the omission of one stanza between the eighth and ninth, two stanzas between twenty-three and twenty-four, and two stanzas between the thirtieth and thirty-first. “His Wishes to his (supposed) Mistresse has things in it vivid and subtle as anything in Shelley at his best; and I affirm this deliberately.” (Dr. Grosart, in Essay on the Life and Poetry of Crashaw, p. lxxiv. Complete Works.) [back]
Note 2. Eyes that displace: “Here, as in the poem, On the bleeding wounds of our crucified Lord where we read, ‘The thorns that Thy flesh brows encloses,’ and elsewhere, we have an example of the Elizabethan use of ‘that’ as a singular (referring to and thus made a collective plural) taken as the governing nominative to the rest.” (Grosart.) [back]
Note 3. Fears, fond and slight: Dr. Grosart reads flight, and says, “I think ‘flight’ is correct, and not a misprint for ‘slight.’” [back]
Note 4. Sydneian showers: “Either in allusion to the conversation in the Arcadia, or to Sidney himself, as a model of gentleness in spirit and demeanor.” (F. T. Palgrave, Golden Treasury, First Series.) [back]
