My name engraved herein
Doth còntribute my 
As Gary Stringer has convincingly shown, Donne structures this valediction poem as a type (or “ectype”) of Jesus’s departure from his disciples, in which his status as incarnation of the Word promises his presence to them even after decay of the body and death through resurrection. If Jesus promises the word made flesh, Donne promises “the flesh made word.” There is an erotics to this uncarnation, of course; the “firmness” of the poet’s name is a literally phallogocentric engraving. But with “my firmness,” Donne depicts himself as existing prior to and apart from his desire, which (at least at the beginning of the poem) he thinks he can possess or “contribute” as he wishes. (Lerner 169)firmness
 to this glass,
Which, ever since that charm, hath been
As hard as that which graved it was.
Thine eyes will give it price enough to mock
The diamonds of either rock.

’Tis much, that glass should be
As all-confessing and through-shine as I;
’Tis more, that it shows thee to thee,
And clear reflects thee to thine eye.
But all such rules love’s magic can undo:
On the one hand, this imperialistic expansion of the name—the name absorbs the beloved by thoroughly identifying “I” and “you”—merely contributes to its potent presence and firmness: the poet controls not only his identity and desire but also the beloved’s. But on the other hand, the chiasmus dizzily disperses and entangles identities, introducing the possibility that the inscription of the name, and the lover’s reflection in it, could recast desire as a series of vexed identifications, as though they are melting into each other. Read this way, what seemed so firm has been unmade. (Lerner 171)Here you see me, and I am you.

As no one point nor dash,
Which are but àccessary to this name,
The showers and tempests can outwash,
So shall all times find me the same.
You this 
entireness better may fulfil,
Who have the pattern with you still.

Or if too hard and deep
This learning be for a scratched name to teach,
It as a given 
A small memento of a skull, usually on a ring, such as D.’s father bequeathed to various friends (Bald pp. 561–2). Chambers quotes Fletcher, The Chances 1. 5. 39–40 (written c. 1617): ‘As they keep death’s-heads in rings / To cry memento to me’ (Gardner).death’s-head keep,
Lovers’ mortality to preach,
Or think this ragged, bony name to be
My ruinous anatomy.

Then, as all my souls be
Imparadised in you, in whom alone
I understand and grow and see,
The rafters of my body, bone,
Being still with you, the muscle, sinew and vein,
Which tile this house, will come again.

Till my return repair
And recompact my scattered body so,
As all the 
Paracelsus, Chirurgia magna 1. 2. 8 (1573) sigg. D5–6 (owned by D., and cited to this effect in Biathanatos, ‘Conclusion’) claims that gems, plants, roots and seeds may be infused with powers to heal wounds by the stars under which they are prepared. Cp. the rejection of the belief in FirAn 391–5, on which see notes.virtuous powers
 which are
Fixed in the stars are said to flow
Into such characters as gravèd be
When those stars have supremacy,

So, since this name was cut
When 
i.e., in Feb.–Mar. 1599, when Venus (‘the amorous evening star’ of Lincoln 61) was in Pisces and melancholy Saturn in Libra, their exaltations, when they were supposed to be most powerful: see headnote. Cp. Titus Andronicus 2. 3. 30–3: ‘though Venus govern your desires, / Saturn is dominator over mine, . . . cloudy melancholy’. For this way of referring to a planet cp. Autumnal 47.Love and Grief
 their exaltation had,
No door ’gainst this name’s influence shut:
As much more loving as more sad
’Twill make thee; and thou shouldst, till I return,
Since I die daily, daily mourn.

When thy inconsiderate hand
Flings out this casement, with my trembling name,
To look on one whose wit or land
New batt’ry to thy heart may frame,
Then think this name alive, and that thou thus
In it offend’st my Genius.

And when thy melted maid,
Corrupted by thy lover’s gold (and page),
His letter at thy pillow’th laid,
Disputed it, and tamed thy rage,
And thou beginn’st to thaw t’wards him for this,
May my name step in, and hide his.

And if this treason go
T’an overt act, and that thou write again,
In superscribing, this name flow
Into thy fancy from the pane.
So, in forgetting thou rememb’rest right
And unawares to me shalt write.

But glass and lines must be
No means our firm, substantial love to keep;
How does the poet’s name go from magical “charm” to substanceless “murmur,” from presenting the beloved with an embodiment of Donne’s firmness to having the name present only as an unconscious phantasm? It seems that, from the beginning, Donne’s “name” has been far too deeply “engraved,” shadowed by its own death—with the pun on writing and graving (death and entombment) echoing throughout the poem (compare lines 1, 4, and 35). (Lerner 174)Near death inflicts this lethargy,
And this I murmur in my sleep:
Impute this idle talk to that I go,
For dying men talk often so.