A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING MOURNING

Analysis of the first four stanzas .

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls, to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now, and some say, no:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
‘Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant,
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

"A Valediction: forbidding mourning" is a metaphysical poem written 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 poem is about the separation of two lovers. One invites the other not to suffer for their distance because their love is not only carnal, but rather metaphysical. . The poet cannot deny that there will be physical separation, but he believes that is a problem for those who are not only united by sensual love. The poet and his lady, instead, share a love which is also non-physical, but metaphysical: the union of two souls which cannot be broken, but expanded through spaces just as gold may be bitten very thin without breaking. .

The poet uses some similes, hyperboles and metaphors, to makes the reader able to understand the situation clear.

The poem starts(in the first stanza) with a simile, which compares the death of virtuous men with the separation of the two lovers. 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 second quatrain he adds that  letting the world known about the laity of their love would be a profanation of their joys. There is the second part of the simile; the poet uses an hyperbole ("tear- floods" and "sigh- tempests") to parody courtly love, which based itself on the unfulfilled desire and that expressed through hands, lips, eyes, tears...        From the phonological level there is the alliteration of sound [l] ("let", "melt", "floods", "tell", "laity", "love"). The poet uses this alliteration because it focuses the readers attention on the last word, love, that is the center of the argumentation

In the third quatrain the poet speaks of the moving of the Earth that brings "harms and fears" but the trepidation of the spheres also if it is greater, is innocent.                       The poet uses words from the scientific area to give explanation to the previous quatrain. Moving of the Earth is associated with the trepidation of the spheres, which refers to the trepidation of the hearth, it is not contaminated, it is pure.

In the fourth quatrain the poet gives an important argumentation (as a matter of fact metaphysical poetry is an argumentative form of poetry): he calls "dull" the love of the lovers who lives on the Earth because it is made up only by sense, thus it cannot admit the distance.                                                                                                                                                    In this quatrain the alliteration of sound [m] comes to surface ("moving", "harms", "men", "meant"), the function is to emphasize the image of movement that the reader creates in his mind. The poet uses the word "sublunary" to describe the love of lovers on the Earth, it is connected to the semantic field of science. Donne calls this love "dull" because it admits only physical love so it cannot tolerate the distance.                                         The first line of the quatrain there is again a strong alliteration of sound [l] ("dull", "sublunary", "lovers", "love"), added with the assonance and consonance between lovers and love.

Moreover the use of enjambment makes the reading faster.