John Donne
(1572 - 1631)
A Valediction* Forbidding Mourning (1611)
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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;
5 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,
10 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
15 Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by'a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assuréd of the mind,
20 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.
25 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 center sit,
30 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;
35 Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
Editor´s Comments
John Donne's poetry has been the object of a fair amount of controversy over the centuries. Usually, it's been his metaphors that attract the attention of readers. Some have criticized them because they're too unlikely, too outrageous; others love Donne's metaphors for the same reason-- they are so unlikely, so outrageous. Metaphor is a very important part of poetry, and Donne's writings are a good place to see how it works.
Think about the subject of "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning": lovers who are forced to be apart from one another for a while. Donne was not the first poet to try to find a way to represent the possibility of continuing to be related, even over great distance. Hundreds of years before Donne wrote, a troubadour poet wrote a poem about traveling to England while his beloved remained behind in France. He used the image of a magnet to catch the sense that one lover can still feel the other, even with the English Channel between them. Donne also starts with the properties of real objects in the physical world: a piece of gold, which can indeed be hammered into a thinner and thinner sheet without breaking, and it's still gold all the while -- just as valuable, just as impossible to tarnish. But while we read, something happens to the image: it changes into something different. With computers, we can "morph" an image: make it change into something else right before our eyes. That's what metaphors do too. One leg of a pair of compasses "leans" and we're talking about an instrument used to draw circles and mark off distances on maps. But if we say that same leg "hearkens" then we're talking about people.
Historical Considerations
One of Donne's friends and biographers, Izaak Walton, has speculated that "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" owes its particularly serious and steady tone to the circumstances of its composition. Walton says it was addressed to Donne's wife on the occasion of his trip to the Continent in 1611. Donne had many forebodings of misfortune, which were verified when his wife gave birth to a stillborn child during his absence.
The Poet´s Life and Work
Biography
Critical Essays
- Cleanth Brooks, "The Language of Paradox."
- A. B. Chambers, "Glorified Bodies and the 'Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.'"
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