A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning by John Donne

 

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning by John Donne

Text

   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 our selves know not what it is,

    Inter-assured of the mind,

    Careless, 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 aery 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 the other do.

 

    And though it in the center 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.

     Introduction of the Poem

"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" is a 36- line metaphysical poem by John Donne, written in 1611 when Donne intending to go to France. His wife, Anne was unhappy with his going abroad. Donne composed this poem to comfort her with logical argument. He claimed to be spiritual lover. Physical separation cannot make them unhappy.  It was published posthumously in 1633.