A valediction forbidding mourning is a love song written by John Donne. The reader cannot understand the content of the song just reading the title. “Un invito a non essere tristi” is the title translation. It makes the reader understands that the song may be an invitation to someone not to cry. The song is about two lovers, who are going to be distant for a while. The poet uses similes, hyperboles and metaphors to make the situation clear. The first stanza presents a simile that compares virtuous men’s death with the separation of the two lovers. Virtuous men don’t make noise when they die and this is a piece of advice given to the lovers: they have to do the same, because “tear-floods” and “sigh-tempests” ruin their love and their joy. Donne uses the word “melt” that belongs to the chemical area and means to mix. This underlines that this song belongs to metaphysical poetry. In the third quatrain the narrator makes a comparison referring to the Earth moving. This moving can make men suffer, but men’s power can’t stop it. It is just an innocent rule. The word “trepidation”, in this case, can be read like a moving of the Earth, a moving of the bodies or a feeling that you feel when you are not balanced or when unexpected happens. This stanza reassumes the metaphysical concept, quoting words referring to geographical and scientific area. In the fourth stanza the poet talks about sublunary lovers: they can feel love only with senses. When body id far, they miss the thing they love, and if they’ll be separated for a while their love will finish. In the fifth Donne explains another kind of love: the mental one. It connects the mind of the two lovers, and, even if the body is absent, they still feel in love. The words “eyes, lips and hands” recall the courtly love poetry. They represent the bodily aspect of love. In the following quatrain the narrator speaks about the lovers’ souls: they are so linked together that, if the beloved is far, their souls will expand themselves, instead of break off. The poet says that the expansion of their souls is like the extension of gold that becomes fine like air. The following quatrains are about the metaphor of the compass. In the seventh one Donne makes a comparison between the souls of the two lovers and the two feet of a compass: one of the two has to be stiff when the other moves. In the following one he continues to explain the metaphor: the foot which stays in the middle follows the other stretching itself and returning home. In the last stanza he concludes repeating the metaphor and telling that, in his situation, the woman is the foot which is stays, giving stability. The man makes a circle around the woman. It recalls the idea of perfection and continuity.