John Donne: "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"
Like gold to airy thinness beat ...
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In “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” we have a classic example of the metaphysical conceit.1 And somehow, as only Donne can do, he creates in this witty, ingenious, and intensely cerebral work one of the most romantic works of poetry this reader has ever read.
The comparisons Donne makes in the poem aren’t just unusual (and therefore difficult), but much of the language and imagery is dated, even archaic. So this is a poem that needs even more than usual to be read closely, slowly, and carefully, word-by-word in order to even begin getting a handle on all its richness.
Even the title is challenging to most upon first encounter.
Usually, we associate the word “valediction” with an address given at graduation, traditionally by the graduate with the highest grade or some such honor. But what the word really means is “farewell speech.” So, a valediction is a word of farewell for any occasion, not just graduation.
The colon that follows “valediction” is a great example of how punctuation matters. (Remember, “Let’s eat Grandma!” Punctuation saves lives!?) Here the colon “announces” that what follows the first half of the title is an explanation or description of what comes before. Thus we can understand that this is going to be a farewell address, one that that forbids the hearer to mourn.
Ah, mourning. Immediately we think of death. This must be a farewell address on the occasion of a death, a funeral—a eulogy, perhaps. This is what we are being set up to expect.
Reader, it is not that.
But Donne misleads us with some intention. He, as a metaphysical poet, is always concerned (especially in the Holy Sonnets) with eternity and souls and such. So death can never be far off. In fact, the opening line speaks of men who pass away. Thus the death imagery only deepens.
But let us stop here and read (and listen):
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.
But we by a love so much refined,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
As always, it helps to pay attention to the overall structure of the poem. This means, among other things, considering the stanzas and discerning what main ideas are developed in each one before attending even more closely to the diction and syntax, always extra important in poetry.
With the first two stanzas we find only one complete (albeit long) sentence. So in addition to the stanza structure, we should consider basic grammatical structures including sentences. This first sentence has two halves, one quatrain each. The first half begins “as,” and the second half begins “so let us.” The “as” signals a simile (remember, a simile is a comparison that uses like or as)—the “so” the second half of the comparison. Thus, the structure is “as this thing is, let us be.” Or “let us be like this.” Now that we know what’s happening overall, let’s look more closely at the “as” and what should be like it.
“As virtuous men pass mildly away” suggests the peaceful way in which people of virtue (of holiness, character, faith) die. They are not afraid to meet the end of their earthly lives, so they meet death not in inner torment or with the pain of regret, but “mildly,” even as the friends gathered around the deathbed and loved ones (understandably) fret and worry.
Let us be peaceful like this, the speaker says. Let us not let ourselves be moved by tempests of emotions.
Now, we are still being led to think that whatever the occasion of this poem is, it is linked to death, based on the associations made with the words, imagery, and comparisons made thus far. Again, such choices by the poet have their intended effect.
'Twere profanation of our joys / To tell the laity our love” is, at first glance, a hard couplet to translate into modern understanding. But it is so beautiful once you do!
Think of the more familiar expressions we have today such as “wearing your heart on your sleeve” or “don’t kiss and tell.” In loftier, more spiritual, even sacred language, these lines are saying that it would profane this pair’s love to reveal it or tell it to everyone else. “Laity” literally refers to lay people, as opposed to clergy, thus making the implication, through comparison, that the speaker and the person he is speaking to have a love that is holy, sacred, not common, not merely of the laity.
And here we land on the true subject of the poem: love.
Yet, there is still clearly an occasion here that might bring mourning, mourning the poet seeks to forbid. These lovers are parting. There is a farewell taking place. Is it the farewell of death?
At this point, however, the death imagery ceases. The rest of the poem is spent describing, stanza by stanza, the nature and character of this love.
The third stanza seems to bring in a new topic out of nowhere in comparing the results of an earthquake (hurt and fear) to something far greater and significant—the trepidation or vibrations of the universe itself.2 And yet, when the universe moves, it is “innocent” in the sense that it is an event so beyond our human ability to sense or feel that we feel no effects. The comparison implied is that the love being described in the poem is like that--so much greater than earthly experience that it cannot even be comprehended in the mortal realm.
Indeed, earthly love (the earth is “sublunary” or under the moon) is based on sensory (or physical) experience. Rooted in this, in earthliness, such love cannot handle absence because when apart the very basis of such love (the body) is gone.
But, the speaker says, our love is not based merely on the physical, so our care (and love) for one another is no less when eyes, lips, and hands are absent.
(Is this poem about a parting caused by death? It still seems unclear, doesn’t it? But surely, it is about a separation of some kind.)
The metaphysical conceits continue apace.
Our two souls, the speaker says, are like gold. Gold is a malleable metal that when beaten does not break. It merely thins. Although the speaker must go, there will be no break (or breach), but an expansion. An airy expansion like beaten gold.
This is the point in the poem where I always begin to get goosebumps.
With the next stanza begins the final metaphysical conceit that will take up the last three stanzas. It is mind-blowing.
“If they be two” (the antecedent to the pronoun “they” refers to “souls,” thus, “if our souls be two”) they are two like the two legs of a compass. Remember the compass from tenth grade geometry class? That instrument used to draw a perfect circle by placing the pointy part on the paper and using the other one with the lead to circle around it? The speaker is saying that his and his lover’s souls are like this: separate but permanently attached.
But it gets even better.
They aren’t just permanently attached, but the beloved, the leg that remains fixed and firm, allows him to stretch out far (“obliquely”) in parting, make a perfect (“just”) circle, and by leaning toward him, brings him home again.
As it turns out, this poem is about parting, but not about the parting that death brings. It was written by Donne on the occasion of his journeying far from home on a diplomatic trip that would end up being months long. How hard such a long parting would be for any couple so in love (and with so many children!) as Anne and John!
But Donne’s poem assures his wife that their holy, sacred, and eternal love can handle even this. Theirs is no ordinary love. It is rather virtuous, precious like gold, transcendent like the spheres, heavenly unlike the earth, and like two legs of a compass—forever joined and just.
Up next:
"Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”3
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BOOK NOTE:
It is fitting during this series on John Donne to draw your attention to a new book—on writing and life—with a title inspired directly by Donne: Break, Blow, Burn, and Make by E. Lily Yu.
This book is for anyone who cares about words and faith. Or either one of those! Yu is a careful, beautiful thinker, writer, and maker. I had the chance recently to interview her about her book for Christianity Today, so you can read more about the book here:
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2024/june-web-only/break-blow-burn-make-lily-yu-writer-thoughts-creation.html?utm_medium=widgetsocial
A conceit (in the literary context) is an elaborate or unusual comparison (metaphor). A metaphysical conceit is such a comparison that links a physical or material thing with a spiritual or transcendent idea. You might wonder how this literary term is related to our more common use of the word “conceited” it mean prideful or arrogant. The connection is the exaggeration, the sense of being full, even full of oneself! A literary conceit is “full” of meaning in the comparison.
I don’t know the ins and outs of seventeenth century science and what Donne and his contemporaries knew about the universe then, but check out what scientists today say about gravitational waves: https://www.space.com/25088-gravitational-waves.html
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. By Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr (London: Routledge, 2002), 117.
Thanks for the poem and your explanation. I was drawn to the conceit of the gold thinning out but maintaining its essence. I was planning to write a letter to my wife and this certainly gives me a lot of inspiration.
This series and Donne’s poetry is asking me to consider a different side of life. I often operate in the “hear and no” moving from job, to family, to concerns. I appreciate looking at life from a different perspective and taking the time to think about love and death in a meaningful way.
When I read this poem before your newsletter I thought, “This is about death.” 😆 Then I read your wonderful explanation and it makes sense. I did get lost in the second half and thought…”is this a riddle?” Well…kind of. I love what the poem means and thank you for teaching us.