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John Donne (1572-1631)

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning


              1As virtuous men pass mildly away,
              2      And whisper to their souls, to go,
              3Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
              4      "The breath goes now," and some say, "No:"

              5So let us melt, and make no noise,
              6      No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
              7'Twere profanation of our joys
              8      To tell the laity our love.

              9Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;
            10      Men reckon what it did, and meant;
            11But trepidation of the spheres,
            12      Though greater far, is innocent.

            13Dull sublunary lovers' love
            14      (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
            15Absence, because it doth remove
            16      Those things which elemented it.

            17But we by a love so much refin'd,
            18      That ourselves know not what it is,
            19Inter-assured of the mind,
            20      Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

            21Our two souls therefore, which are one,
            22      Though I must go, endure not yet
            23A breach, but an expansion,
            24      Like gold to airy thinness beat.

            25If they be two, they are two so
            26      As stiff twin compasses are two;
            27Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
            28      To move, but doth, if the' other do.

            29And though it in the centre sit,
            30      Yet when the other far doth roam,
            31It leans, and hearkens after it,
            32      And grows erect, as that comes home.

            33Such wilt thou be to me, who must
            34      Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
            35Thy firmness makes my circle just,
            36      And makes me end, where I begun.

Notes

1] According to Izaak Walton, addressed by Donne to his wife when he was about to set out for France in 1612.

9] Moving of th' earth: earthquake.

11] trepidation of the spheres. The precession of the equinoxes under the Ptolemaic system was explained as caused by the shaking or trepidation of the outermost, crystalline sphere of the universe.

12] innocent: harmless.

13] sublunary: earthly; everything below the moon was thought subject to change; above it was "unchangeable firmament," as Donne says in "The Fever," playing with the same metaphor.

14] Whose soul is sense: see note on "The Ecstasy," lines 53-56.

16] elemented: were the elements of, composed.

19] Inter-assured of the mind. "For we consist of three parts, a Soul and Body, and Minde: which [mind] I call those affections and thoughts and passions which neither soul nor body hath alone but have been begotten by their communication, as Musique results out of our breath and a cornet" (Donne).

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: John Donne, Poems, by J. D. With elegies on the authors death (M. F. for J. Marriot, 1633). MICF no. 556 ROBA. Facs. edn. Menston: Scolar Press, 1969. PR 2245 A2 1633A. STC 7045.
First publication date: 1633
RPO poem editor: N. J. Endicott
RP edition: 3RP 1.176.
Recent editing: 4:2002/2/5

Rhyme: ababcdcd

Other poems by John Donne

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