Analysis of John Donne's AValediction

Brief Analysis of John Donne’sA Valediction: Forbidding Mourning John Donne is one of the major metaphysical poets in the first half of the 17th century, his poems being distinctive for bold and ingenious conceits and frequent use of paradox. Had he not lived and written his metaphysical poetry, later poets such as T S Eliot might not have been able to come up with the idea of injecting profound thoughts, wild conceits and allusions into their poems. In this sense, he is of profound importance, and deserves our careful study.Here is his famous poem, Valediction: Forbidding Mourning. Indeed it is so famous now that most of our English majors may have already read it. However, so many hard-to-understand conceits and strange or even far-fetched thoughts make it extremely hard to understand. So here I would like to give a brief analysis of this poem, with the emphasis put on the rhetoric, especially themetaphors.The poem is as follows:A Valediction: Forbidding MourningAs 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, T'were profanation of our joysTo 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 admitAbsence, 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 yetA breach, but an expansion,Like gold to airy thinness beat.If they be two, they are two soAs stiff twin compasses are two,Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if th'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 mustLike th'other foot, obliquely run;Thy firmness makes my circle just,And makes me end where I begun.The title “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” show s the purpose of the poem, which is to express the poet’s love for his wife and his persuasion to his wife that their parting should not cause any sadness for it is not a separation but an extension of their love, in a straightforward way.The first two lines allude to the conventional belief that when people are dying, they whisper to their souls, asking them to leave the world with their bodies. However, here the image of the body and the soul refers to the relation between the poet and his lover—they cannot be separated. Even if they are not together geographically, their hearts and souls are closely together. This is so obscure acomparison that even a highly learned scholar may not be able to decipher without proper background knowledge and illustration.The third and forth lines are also metaphoric: the surface meaning is when men die, their friends think the breath of the deceased is gone, while indeed perhaps the poets implies that even there is no breath for others to feel, the unification of soul and body remains invisibly. So we can say, even the love between the poet and his wife will appear to be quieted down owing to the temporary farewell, the fire of intense love is still flaming underground.The following stanzas just illustrate the meaning above: instead of the earthly, fleshly, corporeal love whose essence is just sexual desire and in which the parting lovers make quite a lot of noisy cries of grief, their love is quiet and peaceful, their parting just like two virtuous men bidding farewell without any outward show of sadness, for they know the temporary parting is rather an extension oftheir love than a splitting of it.The floods of the tear and the tempests of the sigh in the second stanza are a kind of metaphor and hyperbole in Petrarchan style. In fact because the poet disapproves them, he may show his aversion to the traditional noisy love and regard it as pretentious here. Whereas the metaphoric words “profanation” and “laiety” (which is equal to laity, layman, secular) indicate that their own love is something holy and should not be blasphemed. The third stanza raises a comparison between the grand noisy earthquake and the greater but quiet movement of the celestial objects. This is an antithesis as well as an underlying metaphor. The earthquake refers to the earthly love whereas the movement of the spheres refers to the love between the poet and his wife. Although the former is great and strident, even tumultuous, it is no match for the latter which is much greater yet quiet.The fourth and fifth stanzas give a generalantithesis. The reason why the love of the poet and his wife is differentiated from worldly love is illustrated here: their love is based on their souls rather than on their fleshly envelops, so they can stand the parting without losing the base of their love, while other lovers may change their minds for not having the voluptuous excitement from the same person any longer.Then the sixth stanza generates another famous metaphor: their love is compared to gold, and the parting, the extension of the gold when it is stricken flat. In this sense, the parting of the lovers is not a separation of hearts but an extension of their love. Indeed it is far-fetched and if someone reads carefully he may find the comparison itself is illogical for there is no necessary relation between the parting and the extension of love—to our common sense, parting can hardly be a form of extension of love. Maybe the poet has his own reason but not clearly proposed.Then the next three stanzas,as one of the most noted parts, end the whole poem in a climax. The famous simile, the comparison between the souls of the poet and his lover and a pair of compasses, highlights the intensity and uniqueness of their love and their mutual dependence, thus revealing the best kind of love ever existing in the readers’ minds. The poet is the roaming foot and his wife is the fixed one. The poet is traveling outside but he is destined to revolve around his wife after all. And after a long circular journey, he will return home to his wife. On the other hand, his wife will lean, and hearken after him when he is outside traveling. So generally there is a great invisible bond gluing their hearts together even if they are separated geographically. Besides, the fixed foot is a symbol of firmness while the walking foot is a symbol of perfection for it draws a circle. The perfection of love and the firmness of it are closely dependent on each other. This is thebest conceit in the English literature.All in all, this poem is one of the best metaphysical poems which enjoys a fine reputation and requires our careful study and analysis. On the whole, it flows from metaphor to metaphor, conceit to conceit, expressing the poet’s attitude towards the temporary parting in a relieved way. Somehow, in tone and mood the poem is steady, serious, serene and transcendent; but it is also muted and somewhat depressing so that, while the genuine love is thrown in relief, the readers tend to detect an ominous undercurrent of worry and anxiety.约翰·多恩作为玄学派的先驱者之一，他一改伊利莎白时代诗歌的浮华和奢靡的文风。