John Donne 'A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning'.

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John Donne

‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’

     This poem is purported to have been written in 1611, when Donne left his wife to journey to France. In terms of theme, the poem yet again deals with the immensity and permanence of the love between poet and beloved; in terms of conceits, this poem contains one of Donne’s most famous conceits, that of the twin compasses in verses 7-9; however, the poem is also interesting as containing other scientific references to the craft of metallurgy and to Renaissance astronomical and metereological theory.

    Basically, the poem falls into three sections elaborating three different conceits, each of which provides a different metaphoric way for the beloved to view her absence from the poet, and to be consoled. The first conceit, elaborated upon in verses 1-3, is a metereological and astronomical one. It begins, in verse 1, with a comparison between departure for a journey and departure in death; in this regard, the beloved is advised to emulate a ‘virtuous man’ who would ‘whisper to his soul to go’ without melodrama or hysterics or fear, dying so imperceptibly that his friends cannot tell if he has stopped breathing or not. Such a quiet death, little more than a breeze, is thus made an analogy for departure, as the poet advises his beloved to ‘melt’ just like this ‘and make no noise,/No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move’ as such hysterics are unworthy, a ‘profanation’ of their love. In verse three, the poet then goes on to discuss his departure in terms of earth movement, saying that while earthquakes ‘bring harms and fears’ to men, who frantically try to explain what this awful event has done and what it portends, the beloved should regard his departure as analogous to the movement of the crystalline sphere which, though greater farther than an earthquake, caused no damage. In other words, what the poet is saying is that ordinary human beings whose love is not so pure regard death as a disaster equivalent to a flood, a tempest, or an earthquake; in fact, if the love is perfect, departure can take place in perfect calmness, no matter how far the beloved may roam, as such movement can only perfect their love, just as the ‘trepidation’ of the crystalline sphere kept movement along all the celestial spheres in just order. The contrast being made is one that Donne often uses, between ‘sublunary’ love, which regards merely the physical and so is subject to all the whims of weather, and ‘supralunary’ or celestial love, which focuses on the spiritual, and so stands above all the storms, floods, earthquakes and other metereological and natural disasters that can beset mankind.

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     The second section of the poem shifts ground and moves to yet another conceit meant to console the beloved: here the reference is to metallurgy. In this case ‘Dull sublunary lovers’ are like dross metal, ‘dull’ and unrefined, mixed with earth and ‘sense;’ as a result they cannot bear physical ‘absence’ because ‘it doth remove/Those things which elemented it,’ that is, the baser elements. In human terms, the baser elements are, of course, the physical and sexual elements of love: once again, ‘sublunary’ love, which focuses on the physical, cannot bear absence because it has not been refined ...

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