Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, A, is one of the best-known poems by the English poet and cleric John Donne. Donne is considered the leading figure of a group of poets known as the Metaphysical poets, who wrote primarily in the 1600’s. Metaphysical poetry is characterized by irregular rhythms, informal rather than formal “poetic” language, and the use of clever metaphors called conceits. A Metaphysical conceit often stretches a comparison to extreme lengths to express a particular idea, or to describe an emotional or religious state of mind.
“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” is written to a lover whom the speaker must leave behind when he goes on a journey. The poem presents an extended argument for why the lovers must not mourn, but must celebrate how separation only confirms the strength of their love.
As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say, “The breath goes now,” and some say, “No,” So let us melt and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; ‘Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love. Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears; Men reckon what it did and meant. But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent. Dull sublunary lovers’ love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it. But we by a love so much refined That ourselves know not what it is, Interassured of the mind, Care less eyes, lips, and hands to miss. Our two souls, therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth if th’other do. And though it in the centre sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it, And grows erect as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like th’other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun.
In this poem, Donne’s main conceit is the image of a drawing compass (described as “twin compasses” because of its two “feet”) to illustrate the perfection of his and his partner’s love. The poet describes how when the outer foot “roams,” the inner one leans after it, thus suggesting the harmony of two souls moving as one. The constancy of the one lover at home guides the course of the other. The circle, a traditional symbol of perfection, becomes a metaphor for the ongoing and endless love that brings the traveler back to where he began.
Donne also uses other extended metaphors here, such as his comparison in the opening stanza of the lovers’ quiet parting to peaceful death. Later he likens the quality of the couple’s love to the trembling heavens (the “trepidation of the spheres”), in an image borrowed from ancient astronomy.
Donne’s greatest achievement, in both his love poetry and his religious verse, is to combine intellectual precision with expressions of deep emotion. His work is neither too sentimental nor too abstract. He reflects with remarkable economy the fundamental truths of human experience.
For more information on Donne, see Donne, John. See also English literature (Metaphysical and Cavalier poets); Metaphysical poets.
