John Donne’s ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’

John Donne’s ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’
The comfort of the beloved is at the heart of the poem in John Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.” “The Happy Lovers,” circa 1760–1765, by Jean-Honore Fragonard. Public Domain
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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.

Our reason distinguishes us from the animals and grants us the ability to love rather than commit our lives to a bleak and endless expanse of pleasure-seeking. We can choose to die to self and can dedicate our lives to the service of others. However, John Donne recognized that our love is, like everything we are and do, imperfect.

The highest form of human love lumbers gracelessly among the lowest ranks of angels but soars higher by far than the most steadfast of swans. Even as we make that vow to put someone else’s ultimate good before our own, we know that we are fallen. We will falter in that promise many times along the way, and will have to continually redirect our path back to genuine love above self-interest.

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” is a congé d’amour, a lyric poem of farewell. It has one of the most famous conceits (an extended metaphor) in poetry: that of a compass representing the souls of the two lovers.
John Donne's “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” says that lovers are one and cannot forever be apart. "Italian Lovers," by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. (Public Domain)
John Donne's “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” says that lovers are one and cannot forever be apart. "Italian Lovers," by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Public Domain
Published in 1633, the poem draws from Donne’s belief in the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body and the belief that, at that time, one’s glorified body will rise again and rejoin the soul. Just as the two will be reunited one day, so too the two lovers will inevitably be reunited, as they are one and cannot forever be apart. However, a guaranteed reunion is not the primary comfort for the beloved: It is the elevated nature of their love that makes the separation inconsequential. The speaker in the poem must, therefore, make the case that they are set apart in how they love. In so doing, he shows that the highest form of human love is the one which is consistent with our nature.

Future Reunion

John Donne, an Anglican pastor, was writing from the understanding of the human person as a union of body and soul. The first part of the poem therefore unfolds the simile of the separation of soul and body at death, comparing this to the parting of the lovers.

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.

The virtuous man is not afraid of death, but greets it calmly and even encourages his soul to undertake its journey. His passing is so untroubled that there is no sign of disturbance to signal to his friends that he has gone.

The verb “melt” introduces yet another comparison with a change in physical state. Alchemy was widely practiced at the time, and alchemists believed that by extracting the spirit of a metal they could turn it to gold. Alchemy, therefore, served as a metaphor for the resurrection of the body: through its death, the metal was “resurrected” as gold. Thus, both alchemy and the Christian belief in the resurrection of the body serve as examples of two things that are separated, but since they are two parts of the same whole, they are never truly separated at all.

The “laity” cannot understand this type of love. Donne once again places it within a religious context since the hope of the lovers’ future reunion is rooted in Christian belief.

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.

The third stanza is built upon a Ptolemaic understanding of the universe with a series of concentric spheres revolving around the earth. Men are troubled by the movement of the earth, but the “trepidation of the spheres,” which is a far larger motion, doesn’t phase them because they don’t perceive it. In Ptolemy’s understanding, “trepidation” was the oscillation of these spheres in their usual course. Though it was on a larger scale, only the learned understood or perceived this trepidation, just as the laity could not understand the speaker’s love.
All this is to say that the speaker and his beloved share a love that does not rely wholly on physical presence. “Sublunary” lovers, those whose love is of the earth and lacks the spiritual component, cannot tolerate absence because their love depends on the physical presence of the other.  Donne uses a play on words here in that the prefix “ab” means “away from,” and thus in absence they are away from their soul itself, which is sense. Absence removes the very essence of their love, and so, just as the smaller movements of the earth disturb men, so too physical absence disturbs the sublunary lovers.

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.

The speaker and his beloved, on the other hand, have a greater love in which physical absence is like the movement of the spheres: it leaves no sign of a disturbance. Their love, going back to the analogy of alchemy, is refined and made greater through the separation. The sublunary love has no spiritual component to be removed, and so it cannot be turned to gold. On the other hand, the intellectual and spiritual bond in the speaker’s love mean that, as in the separation of metal and spirit in alchemy, the elements of that love become greater than they were before through the separation.

Two Compasses

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.

In his famous image of the compasses, Donne demonstrates how the two souls are never truly parted at all. The movement of either foot is the movement of the other, and thus the image accomplishes the purpose of the congé d’amour, which is to bid the beloved farewell and console her by saying they were not two but one.
“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” says that two souls are never truly parted in the image of two compasses. (Sergei ua/Shutterstock)
“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” says that two souls are never truly parted in the image of two compasses. Sergei ua/Shutterstock

In the last two stanzas, Donne would seem to contradict himself, for the word “roam” implies that the motion of one foot is spiraling outwards, but the word “circle” would imply that the compass is tracing that symbol of perfection and eternity.

In fact, both are true at once: The movement of the compass represents the perfect, divine love belonging to the spiritual realm and the linear movement through time that makes us different from the angels. Though Donne’s love shares something of the divine, it cannot be represented by an image of perfection. Instead, he must use the image of a spiral, extending outward until it reaches its maximum radius and then arriving back where it started.

John Freccero, Professor Emeritus of Italian Literature at New York University, writes, “The beginning of the poem states the relationship of the lover to his beloved in terms of the union of body and soul. The end of the poem traces the emblem of that union, the geometric image of a soul that cannot be perfect while it remains disembodied.” He goes on to say, “Together, these two movements comprise the dynamism of humanity. With its whirling motion, the compass synthesizes the linear extension of time and space with the circularity of eternity.”

The poem is, therefore, a profound recognition of the unique station of the human person as a union of immortal soul and mortal body. He straddles the line between time and eternity, and these partings are necessary so long as he exists in time. In his physical limitations, he cannot be present to every place and person in a given moment.

Reunion of Lover and Beloved 

The form of the poem is itself a reflection of the reunion of the lover and his beloved. Firstly, the conceit itself, the union of two seemingly distant and unrelated subjects, is a reflection of this event. Secondly, the poem is 36 lines; an astronomical theory at the time held that all the planets would return to their original starting positions after 36,000 years, and this event would coincide with the resurrection of the body. The number also references the 360 degrees of the circle traced by the compass before the roaming foot returns back to where it began.

Finally, the poet ends his poem where he began, as he says in the last line. The word “obliquely,” as Freccero points out, has often been applied to planetary motion, and the word “just” brings us back to the virtuous men in the first stanza.

The truth which Donne impresses upon us is that this reunion is not guaranteed. The lover and beloved in the poem have a proper understanding of human nature and love: He can tell her not to mourn because they understand that love cannot be separated into its various components, but is rather a hylomorphic union, as is the human person. Human love is not exclusively intellectual, spiritual, or physical, just as the human person is body, mind, and spirit in one unified whole.

The purpose of speech is to console the beloved in John Donne's “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.” "Pastoral lovers," 1869, by Simeon Solomon. (Public Domain)
The purpose of speech is to console the beloved in John Donne's “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.” "Pastoral lovers," 1869, by Simeon Solomon. Public Domain

Moreover, the comfort of the beloved is at the heart of the poem. The entire purpose of the speech is to console the beloved and to lessen her suffering inasmuch as possible. As the true mark of authentic love, the thought of the other’s good is uppermost, and the speaker’s integrity lies in his eventual return to his beloved, lest he be divided against himself.

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Marlena Figge
Marlena Figge
Author
Marlena Figge received her M.A. in Italian Literature from Middlebury College in 2021 and graduated from the University of Dallas in 2020 with a B.A. in Italian and English. She currently has a teaching fellowship and teaches English at a high school in Italy.
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