A validiction forbidding mourning
In the first stanza he compares the impending separation of the lovers to death. The speaker compares his parting from his lover to the parting of the soul from a virtuous man at death. According to the speaker, "virtuous men pass mildly away" because the virtue in their lives has assured them of glory and reward in the afterlife; hence, they die in peace without fear and emotion. He suggests that the separation of the lovers be like this separation caused by death. In the second stanza the speaker furthers his comparison for a peaceful separation. "So let us melt, and make no noise" (line 5) refers to the melting of gold by a goldsmith. When gold is melted it does not sputter and is therefore quiet. The speaker and his love should not display their private, intimate love as "tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move" (line 6). The speaker thinks that it would be a "profanation" (line 7) to reveal the sacred love he shares with his lady. It would be similar to priests revealing the mysteries of their faith to "the laity" (line 8), that is, to ordinary people. The loud display of grief upon separation would therefore desecrate the sacred love of the speaker and his lady to the less elevated love of ordinary people.
Donne's most famous and unusual comparison starts in the seventh stanza and concludes his poem when he compares the love between he and his wife to "stiff twin compasses" (line 26). In A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, Donne describes a most perfect and unchangeable love between two people. Donne continues to refer to the Ptolemaic universe in the fourth and fifth stanzas. Throughout the poem he skillfully compares the love of the speaker and his lady to things that seem completely different to the love between them. The upheavals in the lives of ordinary lovers on earth are earthquakes ("Moving of th'earth") that bring "harms and fears" (line 9). The speaker explains that the refined love between he and his love doesn't need the presence of the physical body because it is "Inter-assured of the mind" (line 19). a, the speaker again refers to the unrefined love of ordinary people in contrast with the love between he and his lady. The speaker and his lady are connected at the soul and are therefore not really separated. It is like the far-off trembling in the heavens. The other "travels," describing a perfect circle, returning to its point of origin. The twin compasses are described as two only in the sense that there are two legs joined permanently at the top. Furthermore, the circle created by the journey of the compass was the symbol of perfection in Donne's time because just like God and eternity, it has no beginning and no end. One leg, "the fixed foot" (line 27), is planted firmly in the centre. The "fixed foot" of the centre foot "leans and harkens" after the other that "far doth roam" (25-30).
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