“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”

John Donne (1572-1631)

Donne is credited with developing metaphysical poetry – poetry that relies for its
effects on ingenious and complex conceits. Intellectual, strong, often violating
traditional rules of scansion, metaphysical poetry requires work on the part of the
reader, but the sudden insights it provides justify the effort.

Conceit: An elaborate and surprising figure of speech comparing two very dissimilar
things. It usually involves intellectual cleverness and ingenuity.

For study, discussion and writing

Notes
 Donne wrote this poem to his wife, Ann, just before he left on an extended trip
to France. Since Ann was expecting another child, she could not accompany
him. According to Donne’s biographer, Sir Izaak Walton, Ann had a
premonition of impending tragedy. Events later proved her correct, for the
child was born dead. Donne, while in France, saw a vision of Ann walking
across the bedroom with a dead child in her arms.
 “A Valediction” is a farewell message that forbids Ann to mourn Donne’s
absence. Having established his purpose, Donne needs a reason to support that
purpose, and he needs suitable metaphors to express that reason.

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 Donne’s reason is simple: he and Ann are inseparable because their souls are
so intermixed that they have become one( line 21); therefore, even though he
must go far away, he and she, being connected by that soul, are not really
parted.
 He uses two conceits (ingenious metaphors) to explain why: 1. Like gold
beaten to airy thinness, their combined soul will expand, without separation or
break, to cover the distance
or
 2. Their combined soul is like a pair of compasses, with Ann the fixed foot,
leaning toward Donne, the roaming foot, as he travels, steadying him on his
journey and straightening again as he comes home.
 To strengthen his argument, Donne contrasts his and Ann’s love (in which
they share a single soul) with ordinary love (“dull sublunary lover’s love”)
which cannot admit absence because its soul is physical (“sense” or sensation
line 14), and therefore when one of the lovers is gone, he or she is physically
removed from the other (lines 15-16).
 Their love is also on a higher level. like the concentric spheres of the
Ptolemaic system of astronomy (lines 11-12), “tear floods” and “sigh
tempests” would profane it (lines 7-8). Therefore, at parting they should
“melt” and “make no noise”, just as “virtuous men pass mildly away. / and
whisper to their souls to go” (lines1-2).
 In a series of sometimes outrageous comparisons- conceits, similes, and
metaphors drawn from meteorology, theology, geology, astronomy,
metallurgy, and geometry, Donne tells Anne that there is no need to mourn his
departure, for their love is so great and their souls so intermingled that they
will not really be separated by his journey.

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Line by line summary of the poem:

Lines 1-6 Summary

Lines 1-4: The beginning of the poem causes some readers difficulty because the first two

stanzas consist of a metaphysical conceit, but we do not know that until the second stanza.

We should not read the word "as," which begins the poem, to mean "while," although that

might be our instinct. Instead, "as" here means "in the way that"; it introduces an extended

simile comparing the death of virtuous men to the separation of the two lovers. This first

stanza describes how virtuous men die. Because they have led good lives, death does not

terrify them, and so they die "mildly," even encouraging their souls to depart their bodies. In

fact their death is so quiet that their friends gathered around the deathbed disagree on whether

they are still alive and breathing.

Lines 5-6: The speaker now reveals that he is addressing his love, from whom he must

separate. The poem itself will prove to be the "Valediction"—the farewell—of the title. He

also reveals that he has been using a simile, and that the lovers' separation should resemble

the quiet way virtuous men die. This example of metaphysical conceit might seem a bizarre

comparison to make—dying men with the separation of lovers—but A Valediction:

Forbidding Mourning: Text of the Poem 3the key comparison is the quietness of the two

events. He might also be suggesting that their separation, though only temporary, will be like

a small death to him. Still, he asks his love that they part quietly and "melt" instead of split:

the image of melting together suggests they might still be connected in liquified form, an idea

the poem returns to later. He also asks her not to indulge in the overdramatic and clichéd

anguish of conventional separating lovers.

Lines 7-12 Summary

Lines 7-8: These lines suggest why he wants a quiet separation: the joys the two of them

share, both spiritual and sexual, are holy to him. To complain loudly with tears or sighs would

be to broadcast their love to those he calls the "laity." Through this metaphor, he suggests that

ordinary people resemble "laypeople" who do not understand the holiness and mystery of

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their love. The speaker thus implies that the two of them are like priests in a "religion of

love." Therefore, for her to make loud protests about his departure would be to "profane" the

joy of their holy union by revealing it to the uninitiated and unworthy. The wish to be let

alone, to be able to love privately, is especially characteristic of Donne. Several other of his

poems similarly cover privacy, such as "The Canonization" and "The Sun Rising." This

celebration of the private world of two lovers contrasts strongly with the conventions of

Renaissance love poetry, in which the lover wishes to broadcast his love to the world.

Lines 9-12: This stanza contrasts dramatic upheavals on earth with those in heaven.

Earthquakes cause great destruction and create great wonder and confusion among human

beings. In contrast, "trepidation of the spheres," a trembling or vibration of the whole

universe, is far more significant in its scope, but also"innocent"—we cannot see or feel it

because it is a heavenly event. Donne here uses the old-fashioned Ptolemaic model of the

cosmos, in which each planet, the sun, the fixed stars, and a primum mobile, or "prime

mover," occupied a crystalline sphere surrounding the earth, at the center. The contrast

between heavenly and earthly vibrations anticipates a contrast to be developed in lines 13-20,

between earthly lovers directed by sex and lovers who, like them, depend on their spiritual

union.

Line 11: In ancient and medieval astronomy, trepidation of the spheres referred to the

vibration of the outermost sphere of the Ptolemaic universe, causing each sphere within to

move accordingly.

Lines 13-16: The speaker moves from his contrast of earthly with heavenly events to a

contrast of earthly love with the experience he and his lover share. In this stanza he develops

why earthly lovers cannot endure separation from each other. The "soul" or essence of such

ordinary, "sublunary" lovers is "sense": that is, their love is based on the five senses and so

consists of sexual attraction. Therefore, when such lovers separate, they remove from each

other the very basis of their love, which changes and fades like the moon.

Lines 17-20: The speaker continues to reassure his love by developing the qualities that make

the love they share capable of enduring a separation. In contrast with sublunary lovers, their

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love is not based solely on sensual gratification. In fact, it is a love so pure that even they

themselves cannot define it. But because they feel confident in each's feelings for the other,

their physical separation—the absence of eyes, lips, and hands—causes them less anxiety.

Lines 21-24: The speaker begins drawing conclusions about the relationship between his soul

and his love's.

The "therefore" sounds like the conclusion of a logical argument, and he has in fact been

attempting to

Lines 1-6 Summary 4persuade his love not to mourn during his absence. Because they are

"inter-assured of the mind," he suggests their closeness by saying their two souls actually

have combined to form one soul. When he leaves on his journey, that one soul will not tear in

two; instead, it is flexible enough that it will actually expand. He uses gold as a simile to

clarify this expansion. Although the preciousness of gold suggests the preciousness of their

love, the key property of gold here is its malleability. Gold can be made to expand greatly

because it can be hammered into an extraordinarily thin, "airy" sheet. Donne therefore uses a

simile that works emotionally, since gold is valuable, but also scientifically, since the

malleability of gold corresponds to the flexibility and expansiveness of their love. Their love

will not snap but expand, keeping them bound together during their separation.

Lines 25-28: The speaker now admits that he and his love may have two separate souls rather

than one. He then develops the connectedness of their two souls in one of Donne's most

famous and most ingenious metaphysical conceits, an extended simile in which the speaker

compares the lovers' two souls to the feet of a drafting compass. He compares her soul to the

compass' "fixed foot" and his to the other foot. Like the compass, their two souls are joined at

the top, reminding us that their love is a spiritual union "interassured of the mind."

Lines 29-32: The speaker now develops the compass conceit. Although his love's soul is the

fixed foot and his soul will roam in his travels, her soul will continually incline faithfully

towards him, since their two souls are joined, and will return to its proper, upright position

when his foot of the compass returns home to her. At this point in the poem, Donne engages

in a number of puns that suggest the completeness of the love of these two people. Although

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the speaker has been emphasizing the spiritual purity of their love, his assertion that the

compass "grows erect" reminds us that their union is important and satisfying to them

sexually as well as spiritually. Line 26, with its earlier description of the "stiff twin

compasses," may also hint at the man's erection. The speaker may be indulging in further

punning by describing how the compass, when closing, "comes home," a common expression

for "reaching the target," which might suggest sexual intercourse.

Lines 33-36 Summary

Lines 33-36: The speaker concludes the conceit—and the poem—by reasserting that his love's

fidelity and spiritual firmness will allow him to carry out his journey and return home

happily. His running "obliquely" literally describes the angle of the open compass and also

suggests the indirect, circuitous route of his journeys. In this final stanza, Donne may have

included additional sexual puns to underscore the happy future reunion of the lovers. In the

spiritual terms of the compass conceit her firmness enables him to complete his circle, or

journey; in sexual terms, his firmness would make her circle just. And in making the speaker

"end where I begun," Donne may be suggesting that the speaker will finish his journey by

returning to her womb as her lover, just as he originally began his life by leaving his mother's

womb. The possibility of Donne's having included these sexual puns shows the richness of his

language and the muliplicity of meanings available to readers of his work. It also suggests a

vision of human love as healthily integrating both the spiritual and sexual aspects of our

nature.