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    A Valediction Forbidding Mourning by John Donne

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    dacde
    The speaker bids farewell to his lover by comparing their love to virtuous men who pass away quietly. He argues they should part silently without tears so as not to degrade their private love. Their souls are united even when apart, like the legs of a compass remain attached though one roams farther. The stationary soul finds purpose and direction through its connection to the wandering soul, just as the stationary compass foot adjusts based on the moving foot's position, longing for reunion upon its return.

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    A Valediction Forbidding Mourning by John Donne

    Uploaded by

    dacde
    410 views4 pages
    The speaker bids farewell to his lover by comparing their love to virtuous men who pass away quietly. He argues they should part silently without tears so as not to degrade their private love. Their souls are united even when apart, like the legs of a compass remain attached though one roams farther. The stationary soul finds purpose and direction through its connection to the wandering soul, just as the stationary compass foot adjusts based on the moving foot's position, longing for reunion upon its return.

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    The speaker bids farewell to his lover by comparing their love to virtuous men who pass away quietly. He argues they should part silently without tears so as not to degrade their private love. Their souls are united even when apart, like the legs of a compass remain attached though one roams farther. The stationary soul finds purpose and direction through its connection to the wandering soul, just as the stationary compass foot adjusts based on the moving foot's position, longing for reunion upon its return.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    410 views4 pages

    A Valediction Forbidding Mourning by John Donne

    Uploaded by

    dacde
    The speaker bids farewell to his lover by comparing their love to virtuous men who pass away quietly. He argues they should part silently without tears so as not to degrade their private love. Their souls are united even when apart, like the legs of a compass remain attached though one roams farther. The stationary soul finds purpose and direction through its connection to the wandering soul, just as the stationary compass foot adjusts based on the moving foot's position, longing for reunion upon its return.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 4

    A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

    John Donne

    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;
    'There profanation of our joys
    To tell the laity our love.
    Moving of the 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,
    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.
    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.
    Summary

    The speaker opens with an image of good men dying quietly,


    softly urging their souls to leave their bodies. These virtuous
    deaths are so imperceptible that the dying men's friends
    disagree about whether or not the men have stopped breathing
    yet.
    The speaker argues that he and the lover he's bidding farewell
    to should take these deaths as a model, and part ways silently.
    They should not give in to the temptation to weep and sigh
    excessively. In fact, grieving so openly would degrade their
    private love by broadcasting it to ordinary people.
    Natural earthly disturbances, such as earthquakes, hurt and
    scare human beings. Ordinary people notice these events
    happening and wonder what they mean. However, the
    movements of the heavens, while being larger and more
    significant, go unnoticed by most people.
    Boring, commonplace people feel a kind of love that, because it
    depends on sensual connection, can't handle separation. Being
    physically apart takes away the physical bond that their love
    depends on.
    The speaker and his lover, on the other hand, experience a
    more rare and special kind of bond. They can't even understand
    it themselves, but they are linked mentally, certain of one
    another on a non-physical plane. Because of this, it matters less
    to them when their bodies are apart.
    The souls of the lovers are unified by love. Although the
    speaker must leave, their souls will not be broken apart.
    Instead, they will expand to cover the distance between them,
    as fine metal expands when it is hammered.
    If their souls are in fact individual, they are nevertheless linked
    in the way the legs of a drawing compass are linked. The soul of
    the lover is like the stationary foot of the compass, which does
    not appear to move itself but actually does respond to the
    other foot's movement.
    This stationary compass foot sits in the center of a paper. When
    the other compass foot moves further away, the stationary foot
    changes its angle to lean in that direction, as if longing to be
    nearer to its partner. As the moving foot returns, closing the
    compass, the stationary foot stands straight again, seeming
    alert and excited.
    The speaker's lover, he argues, will be like his stationary foot, while
    he himself must travel a circuitous, indirect route. Her
    fixed position provides him with the stability to create a perfect
    circle, which ends exactly where it began—bringing the speaker
    back to his lover once again.

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