A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

John Donne (1572-1631) wrote “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” in 1611 or 1612 for his wife, Anne, though it was not published until 1633 in Songs and Sonnets. Donne’s 17th century biographer, Izaak Walton, believed Donne penned the poem as he prepared to embark on an extended trip to Europe with Sir Robert Drury. In this case, the poem is most likely meant to be a consolation to Anne and addresses their secret love affair.

Another popular, less biographical, reading of the poem suggests it is about the imagined inevitable death of the speaker and his attempt to mediate his lover’s anticipated grief. In either case, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” confronts themes of faith, romantic love, death, and corporeality. It is predominately written in iambic tetrameter and consists of nine quatrains in an ABAB rhyme scheme. As the title suggests, the poem is a valediction: a statement or address made as a farewell.

Unlike many of Donne’s poems, which are known to employ irregular metrical schemes, this valediction adheres to a relatively simple iambic tetrameter. The argument of sacred and holy love able to transcend the limits of human corporeality is central to the poem. Using metaphysical conceit, the poem suggests that although the speaker and their lover’s bodies will be separate, their souls will remain unified. In keeping with the metaphysical tradition, the poem elevates sex as sacred and contains clever philosophical and religious overtones.

The poem is widely celebrated as both a prime example of metaphysical poetry and as a classic love poem. Songs and Sonnets (1933) includes several valediction poems: “A Valediction of My Name in the Window,” “Valediction of the Book,” “A Valediction of Weeping,” and “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.” Among these several instances of this poetic mode, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” most aptly displays the poet’s inclination to merge love and religion. The elevation of love as sacred is but one example of Donne’s use of the paradox of metaphysical conceit and has earned Donne the title “The Father” of metaphysical poetry.

Poet Biography

John Donne (1572-1631) was born in London, England and was a key figure in metaphysical poetry. His parents, John and Elizabeth Donne, were devout Catholics and much of Donne’s poetry stemmed from the political and religious unrest of the time. Donne did not write for publication and fewer than eight complete poems were published during his lifetime; he only authorized two of these. For this reason, his poems are sometimes hard to date.

Between the years 1585 and 1597, Donne traveled abroad and participated in Essex’s military expedition to the Azores Islands. In 1598, Donne entered the service of Sir Thomas Egerton and was appointed private secretary. He studied at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities but did not receive degrees from either because of his opposition to Anglicanism and the Thirty-nine Articles—a doctrine to which he would have had to subscribe had he accepted degrees.

In 1601, 29-year-old Donne secretly married 16-year-old Anne More, much to the disapproval of Anne’s father. In retaliation, Anne’s father refused to provide a dowry and under canon law, had Donne imprisoned at Fleet Prison. The couple had no familial support and therefore financially and socially struggled. Donne continued to write, publishing Divine Poems in 1607 and the prose treatise arguing against Anglican ideals, Pseudo-Martyrs in 1610. Between 16033-17, the Donnes had 11 children; in 1617, at age 33, Anne died seven days after the stillbirth of the couple’s 12th child.

In the years following his wife’s death, Donne served as the chaplain to Viscount Doncaster’s embassy to Germany (1621) and became the dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral (1621), published his first sermon (1622), and eventually became terribly ill (1623). In the final years of life, Donne’s writing took a meditative and fearful turn regarding mortality. He wrote several private prayers and sermons including Three Sermons upon Special Occasions (1623), and Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624). He maintained an influential status in his later life through his poetic, political, and religious involvement.

On March 31, 1631, Donne died in London.

Poem 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,

   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.

Donne, John. “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”. 1633. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” opens with a description of a funeral or memorial where “virtuous men pass mildly away” (Line 1). The speaker notes this generally unimportant and generic departure. The speaker suggests that similar to how these men pass “mildly” (Line 1), so should the speaker’s lover react to his departure. The poem’s lens shifts to the crowd attending the memorial, crying, and audibly expressing their mourning where “some of their sad friends do say, / the breath goes not, and some say no” (Lines 3-4). The speaker further suggests his lover should refrain from public sadness when the time of the speaker’s death or departure eventually arrives. He discourages her from proclaiming their separation, as allowing “the laity” (Line 8)—laymen—to know of their “joys” (Line 7) would profane them.

The speaker continues listing the reasons why he forbids his lover’s mourning, but the tone of the poem is not punitive nor didactic. Rather, the speaker seeks to reassure his lover through a series of analogies meant to console her: Their separation is as inevitable as the parting of body and soul upon entering heaven; their love is as innocent as the celestial and heavenly realms; and their love is as flexible and as malleable as “gold to airy thinness beat” (Line 24).

The speaker’s lover, however, is wary. The speaker concludes his analogies by mentioning two compasses. This analogy differs from the others in suggesting that the couple’s “two souls therefore […] are one” (Line 21) The speaker compares the pair to twin compasses whose foot follows the other—entities that may separately exist but will remain unified for eternity. In suggesting this eternal unification, the speaker consoles his lover in the fact of his eventual death or departure. The speaker notes: “And though it in the centre sit, / Yet when the other far doth roam, / It leans and hearkens after it” (Lines 29-31), and requests, “[s]uch wilt thou be to me” (Line 33).

This conceit of the twin compasses is a prime example of the metaphysical metaphor. The poem as a whole is an example of one that embodies the metaphysical principles of conceit and paradox.