"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"
John Donne (like all metaphysical poets) was a big fan of wild comparisons. His difficult metaphors have taunted (and haunted) students for hundreds of years. In one poem, he uses the death of a flea as a pick-up line. I mean, we at Shmoop have used arachnids, bedbugs, wood ticks, even a big, fuzzy caterpillar once to try to get to know someone—but fleas? Now that's just silly.
"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" is one of Donne's most famously metaphorical poems. Donne wrote the poem in 1611, just before he left for a long trip from his home in England to France and Germany. His wife Ann was going to be stuck at home, and that was probably going to be pretty tough. See, she bore him
twelve kids—an even dozen. So, he wrote her a gorgeously romantic poem to try to say: "Look, we have to be apart, but that doesn't mean we have to fall apart."
The poem is an argument. Donne had the education of a lawyer and was also a famous preacher so most things he wrote had a pretty strong logical, oratorical bent. His argument unfolds as a catalogue of bizarre comparisons. He compares their love to dying old men, earthquakes, stars, gold, and a mathematical compass. It's tricky to follow, but comes together to form a perfect picture of love, love that isn't tied to a person's physical presence, but a spiritual love that can endure even the toughest situations.
The Full Text of
“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”
1As virtuous men pass mildly away,
2 And whisper to their souls to go,
3Whilst some of their sad friends do say
4 The breath goes now, and some say, No:
5So let us melt, and make no noise,
6 No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
7'Twere profanation of our joys
8 To tell the laity our love.
9Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
10 Men reckon what it did, and meant;
11But trepidation of the spheres,
12 Though greater far, is innocent.
13Dull sublunary lovers' love
14 (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
15Absence, because it doth remove
16 Those things which elemented it.
17But we by a love so much refined,
18 That our selves know not what it is,
19Inter-assured of the mind,
20 Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
21Our two souls therefore, which are one,
22 Though I must go, endure not yet
23A breach, but an expansion,
24 Like gold to airy thinness beat.
25If they be two, they are two so
26 As stiff twin compasses are two;
27Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
28 To move, but doth, if the other do.
29And though it in the center sit,
30 Yet when the other far doth roam,
31It leans and hearkens after it,
32 And grows erect, as that comes home.
33Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
34 Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
35Thy firmness makes my circle just,
36 And makes me end where I begun.
Analysis of A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
Stanza One
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:
In the first stanza of this piece the speaker begins with an image of death. He is speaking on the death of a man who is “virtuous.” Due to his good nature his death comes peacefully. Donne compares dying in this instance to “whisper[ing]” one’s soul away. There is nothing traumatic about it. “Whisper” is a perfect example of onomatopoeia. The word sounds or resembles the noise it represents.
The dying man is not alone. There are “sad friends” around his bed who are unable to decide whether or not the man is dead. His final moments are so peaceful that there is no sign to tell the onlookers the end has come. They speak to one another asking if “The breath goes now” or not.
Stanza Two
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.
The second stanza might come as something of a surprise to readers unused to Donne’s complicated use of conceit. Rather than explaining what the first stanza was all about, it adds on additional information. The speaker is comparing the peaceful death of a virtuous man to the love he shares with the intended listener. When they separate they do so without the “tear-floods” and “sigh-tempests” of the shallow. Donne’s speaker sees the way other partners are around one another and knows his relationship is better.
He and his partner would never be so crass as to expose their emotions to the “laity” or common people. It is something they keep to themselves. He states that it would be a “profanation,” or disgrace to their “joy” to expose it. They will “make no noise” and remain on the high ground above those involved in lesser loves.
Stanza Three
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.
The third stanza introduces another image of natural disaster, the “Moving of th’ earth” or an earthquake. It is something unexpected and unexplained. Earthquakes also bring along “harms and fears.” These lines have been added to emphasize the absurdity of making a big deal over the speaker’s departure.
The next two lines are a bit more obscure. They refer to the celestial spheres, or concentric circles, in which the moon, stars and planets moved. Although they are sectioned off, they still shake and vibrate in reaction to other events. Here the speaker is describing their “trepidation,” or shaking. It is a greater shaking than that which an earthquake is able to inflict but it is unseen, innocent. This is another metaphor for how the speaker sees his relationship. It is not the showy earthquake but the much more powerful shaking of the celestial spheres.
Stanza Four
Dull sublunary lovers’ love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
The speaker returns to describing the lesser love of others in the fifth stanza. It is “Dull” and it is “sublunary,” meaning it exists under the moon rather than in the sky. Those who participate in these relationships are driven by their senses. The “soul” of the relationship is based on what one’s senses can determine. Physical presence is of the utmost importance to these loves. They “cannot admit / Absence” because it “doth remove” the entire relationship. Everything shallow lovers have with one another is based on touch and sight.
Stanza Five
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
The fifth stanza provides a contrast to the fourth. He returns to his own relationship and speaks of himself and his wife as “we.” They have a “refined” or well-tuned and highbrow relationship. Their love is so beyond the physical world that they, physical beings, have trouble understanding it. They “know not what it is.”
The next two lines reiterate the fact that the love the speaker and his wife have is spiritual. It is more mental than it is physical. This means they are “Inter-assured of the mind” and do not care for the “eyes, lips, and hands.” When they part these are not the elements they will miss about one another.
Stanza Six
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.
The sixth stanza begins with a fairly straightforward and recognizable declaration about marriage. They might have two separate souls but now they act as “one.” It is due to this fact that when they part, they will not “endure” a “breach, but an expansion.” Their love will stretch as gold does when it is beaten thin. It is the same, even when pushed to the limit.
It is also important to take note of the fact that Donne chose to use gold as a representative of their love. He recognizes the elements of his relationship in its durability and beauty.
Stanza Seven
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.
It is at this point in the piece that the image of the compass, as discussed in the introduction, becomes important. First, Donne goes back on his previous statement about their “oneness.” He knows there might be some doubt of their “inter-assured” relationship so he makes this concession. “If they,” meaning himself and his wife, are “two” then they are the two legs of a compass.
Donne speaks of his wife as being the “fixed foot” of the device. She is has the steady “soul” that remains grounded and never makes a “show / To move.” His wife only moves if “the other do,” meaning himself.
Stanza Eight
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.
In the eighth stanza the movement of the fixed foot is further described. Initially it is in the centre of their world, everything revolves around it. Then, if the other leg, the one compared to Donne, decides to “roam” far into the distance, it leans. This is the only movement that his wife makes. When he needs her to she “hearkens” after him then straightens up again, or “grows erect” when he comes home or returns to the fixed point.
Stanza Nine
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.
The final four lines describe the metaphor in full, just in case any part of the compass analogy was in doubt. The speaker is very much addressing his lines to his wife. He tells her that she will be to him the line that brings him back in. She has a “firmness” that makes his “circle just,” or keeps it within a limited area. No matter what he does or where he roams, she will always get him back to where he began.
Themes
Lovers as Microcosms
Donne incorporates the Renaissance notion of the human body as a microcosm into his love poetry. During the Renaissance, many people believed that the microcosmic human body mirrored the macrocosmic physical world. According to this belief, the intellect governs the body, much like a king or queen governs the land. Many of Donne’s poems—most notably “The Sun Rising” (1633), “The Good-Morrow” (1633), and “A Valediction: Of Weeping” (1633)—envision a lover or pair of lovers as being entire worlds unto themselves. But rather than use the analogy to imply that the whole world can be compressed into a small space, Donne uses it to show how lovers become so enraptured with each other that they believe they are the only beings in existence. The lovers are so in love that nothing else matters. For example, in “The Sun Rising,” the speaker concludes the poem by telling the sun to shine exclusively on himself and his beloved. By doing so, he says, the sun will be shining on the entire world.
The Neoplatonic Conception of Love
Donne draws on the Neoplatonic conception of physical love and religious love as being two manifestations of the same impulse. In the
Symposium (ca. third or fourth century b.c.e.), Plato describes physical love as the lowest rung of a ladder. According to the Platonic formulation, we are attracted first to a single beautiful person, then to beautiful people generally, then to beautiful minds, then to beautiful ideas, and, ultimately, to beauty itself, the highest rung of the ladder. Centuries later, Christian Neoplatonists adapted this idea such that the progression of love culminates in a love of God, or spiritual beauty. Naturally, Donne used his religious poetry to idealize the Christian love for God, but the Neoplatonic conception of love also appears in his love poetry, albeit slightly tweaked. For instance, in the bawdy “Elegy 19. To His Mistress Going to Bed” (1669), the speaker claims that his love for a naked woman surpasses pictorial representations of biblical scenes. Many love poems assert the superiority of the speakers’ love to quotidian, ordinary love by presenting the speakers’ love as a manifestation of purer, Neoplatonic feeling, which resembles the sentiment felt for the divine.
Religious Enlightenment as Sexual Ecstasy
Throughout his poetry, Donne imagines religious enlightenment as a form of sexual ecstasy. He parallels the sense of fulfillment to be derived from religious worship to the pleasure derived from sexual activity—a shocking, revolutionary comparison, for his time. In Holy Sonnet 14 (1633), for example, the speaker asks God to rape him, thereby freeing the speaker from worldly concerns. Through the act of rape, paradoxically, the speaker will be rendered chaste. In Holy Sonnet 18 (1899), the speaker draws an analogy between entering the one true church and entering a woman during intercourse. Here, the speaker explains that Christ will be pleased if the speaker sleeps with Christ’s wife, who is “embraced and open to most men” (14). Although these poems seem profane, their religious fervor saves them from sacrilege or scandal. Filled with religious passion, people have the potential to be as pleasurably sated as they are after sexual activity.
The Search for the One True Religion
Donne’s speakers frequently wonder which religion to choose when confronted with so many churches that claim to be the one true religion. In 1517, an Augustinian monk in Germany named Martin Luther set off a number of debates that eventually led to the founding of Protestantism, which, at the time, was considered to be a
reformed version of Catholicism. England developed Anglicanism in 1534, another reformed version of Catholicism. This period was thus dubbed the Reformation. Because so many sects and churches developed from these religions, theologians and laypeople began to wonder which religion was true or right. Written while Donne was abandoning Catholicism for Anglicanism, “Satire 3” reflects these concerns. Here, the speaker wonders how one might discover the right church when so many churches make the same claim. The speaker of Holy Sonnet 18 asks Christ to explain which bride, or church, belongs to Christ. Neither poem forthrightly proposes one church as representing the true religion, but nor does either poem reject outright the notion of one true church or religion.
Symbols
Angels
Angels symbolize the almost-divine status attained by beloveds in Donne’s love poetry. As divine messengers, angels mediate between God and humans, helping humans become closer to the divine. The speaker compares his beloved to an angel in “Elegy 19. To His Mistress Going to Bed.” Here, the beloved, as well as his love for her, brings the speaker closer to God because with her, he attains paradise on earth. According to Ptolemaic astronomy, angels governed the spheres, which rotated around the earth, or the center of the universe. In “Air and Angels” (1633), the speaker draws on Ptolemaic concepts to compare his beloved to the aerial form assumed by angels when they appear to humans. Her love governs him, much as angels govern spheres. At the end of the poem, the speaker notes that a slight difference exists between the love a woman feels and the love a man feels, a difference comparable to that between ordinary air and the airy aerial form assumed by angels.
The Compass
Perhaps the most famous conceit in all of metaphysical poetry, the compass symbolizes the relationship between lovers: two separate but joined bodies. The symbol of the compass is another instance of Donne’s using the language of voyage and conquest to describe relationships between and feelings of those in love. Compasses help sailors navigate the sea, and, metaphorically, they help lovers stay linked across physical distances or absences. In “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” the speaker compares his soul and the soul of his beloved to a so-called twin compass. Also known as a draftsman’s compass, a twin compass has two legs, one that stays fixed and one that moves. In the poem, the speaker becomes the movable leg, while his beloved becomes the fixed leg. According to the poem, the jointure between them, and the steadiness of the beloved, allows the speaker to trace a perfect circle while he is apart from her. Although the speaker can only trace this circle when the two legs of the compass are separated, the compass can eventually be closed up, and the two legs pressed together again, after the circle has been traced.
Blood
Generally blood symbolizes life, and Donne uses blood to symbolize different experiences in life, from erotic passion to religious devotion. In “The Flea” (1633), a flea crawls over a pair of would-be lovers, biting and drawing blood from both. As the speaker imagines it, the blood of the pair has become intermingled, and thus the two should become sexually involved, since they are already married in the body of the flea. Throughout the
Holy Sonnets, blood symbolizes passionate dedication to God and Christ. According to Christian belief, Christ lost blood on the cross and died so that humankind might be pardoned and saved. Begging for guidance, the speaker in Holy Sonnet 7 (1633) asks Christ to teach him to be penitent, such that he will be made worthy of Christ’s blood. Donne’s religious poetry also underscores the Christian relationship between violence, or bloodshed, and purity. For instance, the speaker of Holy Sonnet 9 (1633) pleads that Christ’s blood might wash away the memory of his sin and render him pure again.
Motifs
Spheres
Donne’s fascination with spheres rests partly on the perfection of these shapes and partly on the near-infinite associations that can be drawn from them. Like other metaphysical poets, Donne used conceits to extend analogies and to make thematic connections between otherwise dissimilar objects. For instance, in “The Good-Morrow,” the speaker, through brilliant metaphorical leaps, uses the motif of spheres to move from a description of the world to a description of globes to a description of his beloved’s eyes to a description of their perfect love. Rather than simply praise his beloved, the speaker compares her to a faultless shape, the sphere, which contains neither corners nor edges. The comparison to a sphere also emphasizes the way in which his beloved’s face has become the world, as far as the speaker is concerned. In “A Valediction: Of Weeping,” the speaker uses the spherical shape of tears to draw out associations with pregnancy, globes, the world, and the moon. As the speaker cries, each tear contains a miniature reflection of the beloved, yet another instance in which the sphere demonstrates the idealized personality and physicality of the person being addressed.
Discovery and Conquest
Particularly in Donne’s love poetry, voyages of discovery and conquest illustrate the mystery and magnificence of the speakers’ love affairs. European explorers began arriving in the Americas in the fifteenth century, returning to England and the Continent with previously unimagined treasures and stories. By Donne’s lifetime, colonies had been established in North and South America, and the riches that flowed back to England dramatically transformed English society. In “The Good-Morrow” and “The Sun Rising,” the speakers express indifference toward recent voyages of discovery and conquest, preferring to seek adventure in bed with their beloveds. This comparison demonstrates the way in which the beloved’s body and personality prove endlessly fascinating to a person falling in love. The speaker of “Elegy 19. To His Mistress Going to Bed” calls his beloved’s body “my America! my new-found land” (27), thereby linking the conquest of exploration to the conquest of seduction. To convince his beloved to make love, he compares the sexual act to a voyage of discovery. The comparison also serves as the speaker’s attempt to convince his beloved of both the naturalness and the inevitability of sex. Like the Americas, the speaker explains, she too will eventually be discovered and conquered.
Reflections
Throughout his love poetry, Donne makes reference to the reflections that appear in eyes and tears. With this motif, Donne emphasizes the way in which beloveds and their perfect love might contain one another, forming complete, whole worlds. “A Valediction: Of Weeping” portrays the process of leave-taking occurring between the two lovers. As the speaker cries, he knows that the image of his beloved is reflected in his tears. And as the tear falls away, so too will the speaker move farther away from his beloved until they are separated at last. The reflections in their eyes indicate the strong bond between the lovers in “The Good-Morrow” and “The Ecstasy” (1633). The lovers in these poems look into one another’s eyes and see themselves contained there, whole and perfect and present. The act of staring into each other’s eyes leads to a profound mingling of souls in “The Ecstasy,” as if reflections alone provided the gateway into a person’s innermost being.
Setting
The setting of the poem is the occasion mentioned in the title: Donne's parting with his wife before his long trip to continental Europe. It's helpful to picture Donne holding his wife Anne in these last moments—perhaps on a dock with busy deckhands loading supplies behind them—and seeing her begin to tear up as he starts to go. This poem then becomes his seventeenth-century, awesome way of saying: "Don't cry, baby."
There is a broader context, though, that also helps us understand the poem. Donne lived in an age fascinated by wit, and he ran with a witty crowd of lawyers and other high-society men that would hang out in coffee-houses and try to impress each other with riddles, poems, or plain ridiculous arguments. Donne's work was groomed by this crowd and so, even though this is an intimate love poem, it still has that clever flair to it.
In a sense, then, one setting for this poem is the relationship between Donne and his wife, which he attempts to pacify and settle with the arguments he presents here. He uses both his wit, and this romantic devotion, to ensure that the relationship-setting will hold together, in spite of his upcoming breach.
Critical response
Considering it Donne's most famous valedictory poem, Theodore Redpath praises "A Valediction" for its "lofty and compelling restraint, and the even tenor of its movement". Targoff maintains that what distinguishes "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" from Donne's other "Valedictions" is what Donne leaves for his lover: "Donne does not leave his beloved either a physical or spiritual piece of himself. Instead, he leaves her the power of his poetic making. What is meant to prevent her "mourning" is not her possession of his name or book or heart or soul. It is the possession of his metaphors, metaphors of their union that seem invulnerable to division". Guibbory uses "A Valediction" to highlight Donne's status as "master of the monosyllable, the small word that holds the line taut" with his use of the word "beat" rather than "spun" in the analogy of beaten gold, while Ian Ousby uses the compass metaphor as an example of Donne's skill at weaving conceits "sometimes extended throughout an entire poem in a virtuoso display of similitude". This view is seconded by Geoffrey Galt Harpham, who refers to it as "the best known sustained conceit".
Sicherman writes that "A Valediction" is an example of Donne's writing style, providing "[a] confident opening, a middle in which initial certainties give way gradually to new perceptions, and a conclusion manifesting a clear and profoundly rooted assurance". At the same time, she considers it "a poem whose development is so subtle, whose conclusion so perfect, that one may remain unaware of while responsive to the pattern of discovery". The analogy of beaten gold was heavily criticised by T. S. Eliot as not being based on a statement of philosophical theory; Targoff argues that this is incorrect — that Donne had a consistent philosophy, and that the analogy of beaten gold can be traced to the writings of Tertullian, one of Donne's greatest religious influences. Another critic of Donne, Samuel Johnson, noted that the poem's compass analogy highlights the "violence" used by metaphysical poets to "[force] the most heterogeneous ideas together".
So "
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" is a metaphysical poem by John Donne. Written in 1611 or 1612 for his wife Anne before he left on a trip to Continental Europe, "A Valediction" is a 36-line love poem that was first published in the 1633 collection
Songs and Sonnets, two years after Donne's death. Based on the theme of two lovers about to part for an extended time, the poem is notable for its use of conceits and ingenious analogies to describe the couple's relationship; critics have thematically linked it to several of his other works, including "A Valediction: of my Name, in the Window", Meditation III from the
Holy Sonnets and "A Valediction: of Weeping".
Donne's use of a drafting compass as an analogy for the couple—two points, inextricably linked—has been both praised as an example of his "virtuoso display of similitude",[1] and also criticised as an illustration of the excesses of metaphysical poetry; despite detractors, it remains "the best known sustained conceit" in English poetry.[2] As well as citing this most famous example, literary critics point to Donne's use of subtlety and precise wording in "A Valediction", particularly around the alchemical theme that pervades the text.
REFERENCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Vale...dding_Mourning
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...dding-mourning
https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/donne/section5/
https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/joh...dding-mourning
https://poets.org/poem/valediction-forbidding-mourning
https://poemanalysis.com/john-donne/...ding-mourning/
https://www.gradesaver.com/donne-poe...dding-mourning
https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/...dding-mourning
https://www.britainexpress.com/History/bio/donne.htm.
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