John Donne’s wife, Anne Donne, was pregnant when Donne left for France and Germany as part of his diplomatic mission in 1611.

It must have been a difficult moment for the couple. Therefore, Donne wrote the poem “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” with the purpose of easing her before his leaving.

So, let us discuss how he has convinced her through the poem and persuades her that they are one with a detailed analysis of the poem.

The message or idea of the poem is love not only concerns the physical aspects of two people but also exists beyond the physical realm. When lovers are in such a state, they can endure separation because they are already one spiritually.

The speaker convinces his beloved the departure of a virtuous man is a temporal state of the soul; similarly, there is nothing to feel sad about the impending separation as they are always united.

He wants her to be emotionally restrained and not to act like typical lovers. The speaker contrasts their love with that of “dull sublunary lovers” to establish his point.

Ordinary lovers cannot endure partition for a long time as their attachment limits only to the physical level. On the other hand, the speaker’s love is refined and beyond sensory pleasure. Their souls are always united.

To stress the oneness of their relationship, the speaker compares their souls to the two feet of a compass. They remain interconnected even when one travels away from the other. Therefore, their relationship will not break even after the partition.

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,”

The first two lines introduce the theme of separation, which we will explore further in the poem. The speaker compares his separation from his lover with the peaceful death of virtuous men. 

When righteous people are about to die, they gently whisper to their souls to depart. They remain peaceful before the separation of the soul from the body. Virtuous men lead an honorable life, so they do not have any fear of punishment. However, not everyone around them acts calmly. Some of their friends become sad and lament the loss.

They say sadly, “The breath goes now” (Donne 73). The breath is an example of synecdoche as it refers to the entire body of the virtuous man. By using the synecdoche, they convey the sense of demise subtly.

However, others refuse to accept this as an end. They comprehend death as an intermediate state between the earth and heaven.

The repeated use of ‘say’ in the third and fourth lines reinforces the different opinions on death.

Similar to the peaceful departure, the partition is also a division only in a physical sense. Their love exists in a spiritual realm and we will explore the nature of their relationship in the following paragraphs.

The comparison between their impending separation and peaceful death suggests he wants his beloved to accept the partition harmoniously without complaint and calmly farewell him.

His beloved could mourn for separation like any other individual or perceive this not as a separation but rather an extension of their bond.

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.

The image of melting together implies a gradual and peaceful partition rather than a sudden or violent split between them.

Since detachment is only a physical partition, the speaker suggests his love that they should part from each other calmly like virtuous men who do not moan before leaving everything behind.

They should avoid emotional outbursts that can manifest as tears and sighs. The hyperboles “tear-floods” and “sigh-tempests” suggest the exaggerated and messy display of emotions.

She should hide her emotion and not behave like an ordinary lover. If she reveals their love to others by expressing overflow of emotion, it will be disrespectful to their joys of love.

Here the speaker attempts to establish that their love is pure, private and different from the others. They should not share it with anyone. We find Donne reinforcing the same view of love as a private matter of two people in “The Sun Rising“.

The intense environment of the poem is similar to the setting of separation of a couple in “A Valediction: of Weeping” by John Donne.

The speaker, in the beginning, wants to shed some tears in her presence to show how he feels due to the impending separation. Nevertheless, toward the end, he realizes that shedding tears will not do any good.

Like this lover in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”, the speaker also stresses that they should remain calm and composed and not let their grief overwhelm them since grieving can lead to another close to death.

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.

In this quatrain, the speaker changes the flow of thought and moves his attention to the natural phenomena: the earthquake and the movement of the celestial bodies.

He draws an analogy between them and says that earthquake causes harm and fear in people due to its destructive nature. People experience this natural phenomenon and speculate its cause and meaning.

In contrast, the trepidation of the spheres is far greater in intensity than the trembling of the Earth. Compared to earthquake, it is harmless and innocent because they do not have any apparent impact on man.

It is also more significant than the former, and its understanding is beyond ordinary man’s reasoning.

Here we need to mention the astronomical view on the movement of the planets that was prevalent in the Renaissance. The term spheres refer to concentric, crystalline orbs. Many ancient and medieval astronomers believed spheres were responsible for carrying the celestial bodies in the universe. Ptolemaic theory of the universe states the Earth was the center of the universe and a series of concentric spheres surrounded it. The “trepidation of the spheres” means the vibration of the spheres caused all the celestial bodies to move accordingly.

The mentioning of the spheres indicates Donne subscribed to the popular notion of the Ptolemaic view of the universe.

The speaker contrasts earthly and cosmic phenomena to set the differences between ordinary love and divine love. Like the latter phenomenon, their love is pure, and people cannot understand it.

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

The speaker elaborates on the dissimilarity between ordinary lovers and them in this and the following stanza and justifies why they are different from others.

He uses the phrase “dull sublunary” to refer to earthly lovers. Their love revolves around physical needs and pleasure rather than spiritual significance. Their love is limited only to the materialistic world.

The soul or essence of such love is the senses through which the lovers perceive and experience love. They have never explored beyond that.

They never explore love beyond what they could feel and experience in the company of each other. They fail to realize materialistic pleasure cannot be the base of a relationship. In a nutshell, superficial pleasures or material possessions are the constituent elements of such love.

Thus, they cannot accept separation as their love is limited to sensory experience and physical proximity. They cannot endure detachment because their love lacks constituent elements of sacred love. When they are separated, the core principle of their love weakens, and so does the love.

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.

The speaker continues to compare their love with dull sublunary love in this stanza. Unlike earthly love, he states their love is sacred and lofty. It is worth to note the speaker does not define what makes their love divine. 

It is so elevated that they do not comprehend it. The speaker shows humility by acknowledging it is something beyond his grasp. Nevertheless, we can assume characteristics, being connected at a spiritual level, having a depth of understanding and the trustworthiness of both lovers, etc., make love transcend to the divine. These values sustain a relationship even in the absence of physical proximity.

He claims their love is “Inter-assured of the mind” (73). The phrase means their love is a mutual understanding and faith between two minds. Love is not just an emotion that derives from sensual pleasure but evolves from a deep spiritual connection between two souls. 

It does not dependent on the physical beauty of lovers. They can confidently separate from each other and endure it easily without feeling a sense of longing for physical attributes like the “eyes, lips, and hands” (73).

These are the differences between mundane and spiritual love. Overall, the speaker contrasts such love with theirs to reinforce that their love can endure and is not dependent on physical affection.

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.

The speaker explains the nature of their love in this stanza. He convinces her though he might leave her for a few days, the bond they share will not break but expand.

Their souls do not exist separately. They are one spiritually. Therefore, the departure will not create a breach between them.

The speaker employs a simile of gold to compare the power of their love. A goldsmith or craftsman hammer gold to transform it into a thin and delicate form while retaining its strength.

Separation is an external force that is imposed on the couple, but it will not weaken them. Instead, it will refine and enhance the power of their relationship. The endurance of the two individuals during a separation increases the depth and intensity of their love.

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.

In this stanza, the speaker uses the metaphysical conceit of a compass. He compares two souls with two feet of a compass to stress the oneness of their two souls.

A compass has two feet: one stable foot and another a movable foot that can rotate around the stiff foot. One leg must be steady to make the other move and draw a circle.

He compares the fixed and other leg of a compass to his lover and himself. Because of their interconnectedness, the movements of one soul will affect the other.

The two feet of the compass might seem like two from the outside, but they are interconnected. Similarly, the speaker and his beloved might seem like two different beings, but they are one. The use of the conceit emphasizes the idea that the two are attached and can never truly be separated.

We can also interpret this as their shared memories keep them connected in the time of physical distance. It is how they can endure the separation.

Donne also explores the idea of interconnectedness in his poem, “A Valediction: of My Name in the Window”. The speaker uses the metaphor of a window to stress the idea. His engraved name on the window represents him. When the viewer looks at the window, he not just sees himself. Instead, he becomes a part of the speaker. In turn, the speaker becomes a part of the viewer.

The speaker says,

“Here you see me, and I am you.”

The window blurs the boundary between the self and the other.

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.

The speaker elaborates on the metaphysical conceit in this stanza. While the movable foot is away from the fixed part, it still leans and hearkens after the other foot. As it comes to the center, it stands up straight.

The lovers are like two legs of a compass; one remains in one fixed place, their home, while another goes far from the firm leg.

Despite the physical distance, the spiritual unity makes them united. Therefore, he can experience what she feels though he is far away.

We can explain this with the concept of quantum entanglement. We have discussed it in the theme section of this blog post.

When the lover returns home, he aligns of her soul after a period.

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.

In the last stanza, he says she will be the fixed foot that will run indirectly. He feels satisfied that his beloved’s firmness makes his circle complete.

Her firmness means her faith and loyalty in their relationship. Her unwavering nature makes her stable and allows him to complete his purpose without difficulty.

Overall, he uses conceit in the last three stanzas to highlight the meaning that spiritual oneness makes them connected.

The theme of “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” is the unity of souls in separation. The primary motif of the poem is to convince the sweetheart of the speaker of the idea of oneness.

We have mentioned above that the poem bears a biographical trace of Donne’s life. He wrote the poem for his wife Anne before a voyage. 

Similarly, the speaker in the poem is about to be apart from his beloved for an unspecified reason, and the woman is unhappy due to the impending separation.

Therefore, he wants to assure her their love differs from ordinary love. It is superior, and unlike others, they will surely endure the separation since it does not revolve around sensory things.

To explain, he employs the metaphysical conceit of a compass and the simile of gold.

The Quantum Entanglement

The speaker states their love is “Inter-assured of the mind” (73). It indicates there might be some intangible link that connects them who will be far away from each other. We can associate this idea of interconnectedness with the phenomenon called quantum entanglement.

It simply means if two particles (such as a pair of electrons or photons) become entanglement in such a way their properties are correlated, they remain interconnected and affect each other even they are separated by light years.

Human beings consist of particles. Therefore, the two lovers can become entangled at the quantum level and feel a sense of oneness regardless of the distance. 

The entanglement allows them to communicate with them despite their physical distance. However, it is worth noting there is no scientific evidence to support the statement.

So, the title “A Valediction” means a farewell, and “Forbidding Mourning” suggests that the speaker asks his lover not to grieve over his departure. Therefore, The poem is primarily a farewell message to the love before he departs on a journey.

References

Donne, John. “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.” The Metaphysical Poets, Selected and edited by Helen Gardner, Penguin Group, 1985, pp. 73-74.