Notes about "A valediction forbidding mourning"

A valediction forbidding mourning

John Donne

While talking about death he speaks also about the spiritual side when he says "souls". The attention is immediately focused on "virtuous men", not common ordinary people who are only interested in the physical aspect of love.

Just from the second stanza, which repeats the alternate rhyme of the first (noise - joys), the parody of the conventions of courtly love poetry is clear in the hyperbole "tear-floods" and "sigh-tempests". Also the invitation "let us melt" underlines the use of exaggerations.

Speaking of their love the poet uses the word "profanation" which recalls the religious code, something sacred. In addition the contrast of the first stanza ("virtuous men") is repeated by the expression "the laity". It follows that John Donne describes his love as religious and those who do not share it, the lay man, that is the un-initiated. The hyperbolic structure of the first two stanzas is again there in stanza three, when parody is even reinforced.

Here the trepidation caused by one of the two lovers' departure is compared to the shock created by an earthquake which brings forth "harms and fears".

Speaking about earthquakes John Donne refers to disasters and natural calamities according to the mentality of the period when they were considered to be divine punishments. On the contrary J. Donne says that trepidation due to distance between lovers is "innocent".

There follows the statement that "sublunary lovers love" that is the love of slow- witted people/lovers below the moon, there is where corruption and change reign and the moon here marks, according to the mentality of the period, the mark, the boundary between the perfect and the unchangeable world of the higher spheres and the corruptible earth. Corruption and the fragility, together with weakness is due to what Donne calls "(was soul is sense)" therefore if one's love is only the product of senses it cannot admit "absence". Indeed, absence "removes", takes away "those things" that nourish ("elemented") it. The second part of the song start reaffirming the difference between "dull sublunary lovers" and the poet and his lover ("but we by a love so much refined"). The idea John Donne has of his love is that not even he and his lady know not what it is like. They are both sure of the spiritual love that unites them because they are " inter-assured of the mind". As a result they care less in missing "eyes, lips and hands". The argumentation of the poet is very well expressed by the connector of the sixth stanza ("Therefore"). John Donne says that their souls, and this is the way he speaks about their love, which he considers one single thing ("which are one") do not bear "a breach" because their distance is actually to be considered an expansion. To the purpose he uses the simile "like gold to aery thinness beat". The poet refers to the habit to beat gold, it may be thin like air.

The poem ends with the celebrated image of the compass.