John Donne

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

Death as departure

Virtuous deaths were supposedly peaceful—the soul leaving willingly. Donne's using a good death as the model for a good goodbye.

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
{{gap|1em}}"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."
So let us melt, and make no noise,
{{gap|1em}}No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
{{gap|1em}}To tell the laity our love.

The laity

Religious term—laypeople versus priests. Their love is sacred knowledge; ordinary lovers are mere congregants who wouldn't understand.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;
{{gap|1em}}Men reckon what it did, and meant;

Ptolemaic astronomy

Trepidation of the spheres: a wobble in the outermost celestial sphere that astronomers debated. Huge cosmic event, but unlike earthquakes, it doesn't affect daily life.

But trepidation of the spheres,
{{gap|1em}}Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love

Sublunary

Below the moon—the realm of change and decay in Ptolemaic cosmology. Everything beneath the moon's orbit is corruptible, unlike the perfect heavens above.

{{gap|1em}}—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
{{gap|1em}}The thing which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
{{gap|1em}}That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
{{gap|1em}}Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
{{gap|1em}}Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,

Gold leaf

Gold beaten into sheets so thin you can see light through them. The metaphor: their souls stretch but don't break, maintaining continuity across distance.

{{gap|1em}}Like gold to aery thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
{{gap|1em}}As stiff twin compasses are two;

Drawing compass

The geometric tool with two legs—one stays fixed at center while the other traces the circle. The fixed foot actually does move: it leans and pivots as the other travels.

Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
{{gap|1em}}To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
{{gap|1em}}Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
{{gap|1em}}And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
{{gap|1em}}Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just
{{gap|1em}}And makes me end where I begun.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Occasion: Donne's 1611 Departure

Donne likely wrote this when leaving his wife Anne for a diplomatic mission to France in 1611-1612. She was pregnant (again—they had twelve children), and he'd be gone for months. The poem's title uses valediction (formal farewell) but forbids mourning—he's setting rules for how they'll handle separation.

The biographical context matters because Donne's marriage was a disaster for his career. He'd eloped with Anne More in 1601 when she was seventeen and he was her employer's secretary. Her father had him thrown in prison, got the marriage annulled (temporarily), and destroyed his prospects. For years they lived in poverty with a growing family. By 1611, Donne was desperately pursuing patronage, which required travel. This poem is both reassurance and instruction.

The opening stanza's deathbed scene isn't morbid—it's strategic. Virtuous men die peacefully because their souls are ready to leave. Friends watching can't even agree on the exact moment of death. That uncertainty, that quiet transition, is his model for parting. No drama, no public display.

The Compass Conceit

The final three stanzas deploy the era's most famous metaphysical conceit: the geometric compass as model for separated lovers. Donne's showing off—this is technical virtuosity. The fixed foot (Anne) seems stationary but actually leans and hearkens and grows erect as the traveling foot (Donne) roams and returns. Every verb is doing double duty: geometric and emotional.

"Thy firmness makes my circle just" is the poem's thesis. In geometry, you can't draw a true circle without a fixed center point. The compass leg that travels depends entirely on the one that stays put. Donne's claiming his travels, his public work, his oblique running—all of it only works because she remains constant. It's flattery, but it's also math.

Notice "makes me end where I begun"—he's promising to return, but also describing a circle's geometry. The traveling foot must come back to complete the figure. The conceit works because it's perfectly logical: if she moves, the circle fails. If he doesn't return, the circle fails. Their separation is structural, not emotional. The metaphor does what metaphors rarely do: it proves his point through geometric necessity.