John Donn's Valediction: Forbidding Mourning is a poem, precisely a metaphysical poem, that the poet addresses to his wife before leaving; the woman must remain home while the poet leaves on a trip. John Donne's poem is actually a love poem, and as such it is a fine example of sixteenth-century Metaphysical wit.  The metaphysical poets is a term coined by the poet and critic Samuel Johnson to describe a group of British lyric poets of the 17th century, who shared an interest in metaphysical problems  and a common way of investigating them, and whose work was characterized by inventiveness of metaphor.

The poem is made up by nine quatrains, and the poet uses free verses. The structure looks like an logical argumentation, infact it's an argumentative poem; so the poet wants to convince the reader of something, and during the poem he brings argumentations . The rhyme scheme of each quatrain is ABAB. The simplicity of the structure help the reader to better follow the argumentation.

Although the title "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" the reader understand that the main theme will be a departure. Besides the comma explain the reader that this departure might be painful and sorrowful, but the woman mustn't cry, crying is forbidden. The intelligent reader can deduce that the love between the two partners is very strong and intense.

In the first stanza Donne compares the separation between the lovers to two men dying, and he speaks of souls. The reader can predict that the love that combine the lovers is something spiritual, not earthly. The poet will clarify this prediction in the fifth stanza, when he affirm that "But we by a love so much refin'd, That ourselves know not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind, Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss". The poet makes a distinction between an earthy love characterized, as Donne says in the fourth stanza, only by the interest in physical desires and the spiritual love, that we can call "agape". This type of love is the highest one, it's an unconditional love where a person gives out love to another person even if this act does not benefit her/him in any way.  

The poet in the next stanza states that his soul and her wife's are one, and even if Donne is leaving his wife, the departure won't be painful. Erotic love implies  the presence of the bodies, while  spiritual love does not suffer from need. So their soul don't suffer even if the poet leaves his wife, on the contrary the souls will experience an expansion, "Like gold to airy thinness beat".

In the last three stanzas the poet carry on a long metaphor. He compares his wife and him with a compasses. It has two branches, one of them is always fixed and the other rotates around. In a similar way one of the two lover remains in the same position (in this case it's the woman that must stay at home, while the husband goes away) and the other move away. Like in the compass the branch that is fixed fold toward the other, and when the second branch return "at home", the first straighten. Besides the circle is the symbol of perfection, of love and unity and it remember also the wedding ring.

As I said at the beginning of the the analysis this is an argumentative poem. The poet wants to convince his wife that she must not cry and suffer for the departure of her husband. Donne provides different argumentations during the poem, displaying his ability in different areas. He uses an image from alchemy (the properties of gold), geometric knowledge with the metaphor of the compasses and shows familiarity with science and natural phenomena  like earthquakes and also cosmology ("trepidation of the spheres").

Donne uses a high register language and the figure of speech more used is metaphor. There are also some repetitions of the word "soul". This word becomes one of the most important word in the hole poem: the love is a spiritual one, it interests the soul and not the body.