Sara Buiatti       4LSUB       08/04/2021

Textual analysis

A Valediction: Forbidding Morning

Starting from the title “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” the intelligent reader can understand the poem would be an argument (synonymus of “valediction”) where he explains the theme of a mourning and the motivation not to spendi t because, in the title after the first part ”a valediction” there is a colon that, normally, is used to explain the first part of a discourse.

The poem is organized into nine quatrains characterized by a alternate rhyme who follows the ABAB diagram, indeed, for example, in the first stanza the last word of the first line finishes with the word “away” and the third with “say”.

In the first stanza there is the first part of a comparison (that will finish in the second stanza): here there is the imagine of some men dead which friends are praying whispering for them hoping they’ll stay alive with the profanation of joys: with this comparison the Speaking Voice wants to explain that pain wouldn’t be express only by noise but also with silence (“whsper”).

In the third stanza the Speaking Voice explains what shapes the pain can have.

In the following stanzas with an enjambement (“dull sublunary lovers’ love cannot admit absence”) the poet explains that love can’t never die because it couldn’t be removed very easly because the two lovers ‘ll miss the partner’s traits but, then, the poet explains that two souls will ever be separated.

With this poem the Speaking Voice wants to explain that pain can born from different ways and it can be expressed in different ways