A valediction forbidding mourning is a love song by John Donne.

Reading the title the reader can not understand the situation, because it doesn't make explicit the content of the song. Its translation is "un invito a non essere tristi". The poet invites someone not to be sad for something is going to happen.

The song tells about two lovers, who are going to separate. The poet, through some similes, hyperboles and metaphors, makes the situation clear and gives some advices, regarding how to behave, to the lovers.

The poem starts with a simile, which compares the death of virtuous men with the separation of the two lovers (made explicit in the following stanza). Virtuous men die without making confusion. The two lovers have to make the same because "tear-floods" and "sigh-tempests" are a profanation of their love and their joys.   The poet uses the imperative form "let us" and the word "melt". The last one belongs to the chemical area and means to mix or to dissolve.

In the third quatrain the narrator makes another comparison referring to the Earth. When it moves "bring harms and fears".  Men can see the effects of this moving, but they can't do anything to stop it. It is an innocent thing. The main word of this stanza is "trepidation". It can be read on the physical or on the psychological aspect. It means a moving of a subject or a feeling that someone feels when something unexpected happens. This stanza is a metaphysical one, because it refers to the geographical and scientific area (these aspects are typical of metaphysical poetry).

In the fourth stanza the poet speaks about "sublunary lovers": these lovers "cannot admit of absence", because their love is linked only with the physical aspect, not with the mental one, and so, if the beloved is absent they miss the thing they love, and the love between them will be over.

In the following quatrain the narrator speaks about another kind of love, more refined that the previous one. This love links the mind of the lovers. In this case, of the body is absent, the lovers still feel connected. In this stanza John Donne refers to the courtly love poetry, quoting "eyes, lips and hands". These three words represent the love of the senses, and they are not fundamental in the love of the mind.

In the sixth quatrain the poet tells the reader that the souls of the two lovers are so united that, when the lovers are going to separate, they will expand themselves and not split up. In the end of the stanza there is a simile that compares the expansion of the souls with gold, made fine as air.

In the following quatrain he compares the souls of the lovers with the two feet of a compass:  they are always linked together. When one foot moves, the other has to stay.

In the eighth stanza the poet continues to explain the metaphor.  He adds that the foot which stays in the centre stretches itself to the other foot, which moves. When the second foot returns home, to the centre, the first follows it.

In the last stanza John Donne repeats again this metaphor, saying that in this case the woman is the foot which stays, the one which gives stability and makes possible to the foot which moves to draw a circle, that conveys the idea of something perfect and without end.