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A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning: Love Between Two People - Term Papers

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning: Love Between Two People

Although the subject matter of A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning could be applied to any couple pending separation, according to Izaak Walton, a seventeenth-century biographer, John Donne wrote his poem for his wife on the eve of his departure for France in 1611 (Damrosch et al. 238). In the poem, the speaker pleads with his lady to accept his departure. The speaker defines and celebrates a love that transcends the physical and can therefore endure and even grow through separation. In arguing against mourning and emotional upheaval, Donne uses a series of bold and unexpected comparisons for the love between the speaker and his lady.
Donne makes his first surprising analogy in the first ...

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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 or alchemist. 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.
The second stanza introduces another category of startling comparative images, referring to the motions or changes of the earth and spheres. Donne’s contemporaries believed that the heavens were perfect(reflecting the perfection of God). Everything ...

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A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning: Love Between Two People. (2005, December 6). Retrieved January 6, 2026, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Valediction-Forbidding-Mourning-Love-Between-Two/37596

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"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning: Love Between Two People." Essayworld.com. December 6, 2005. Accessed January 6, 2026. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Valediction-Forbidding-Mourning-Love-Between-Two/37596.

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 12/6/2005 11:29:39 PM
Category: Poetry & Poets
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 1092
Pages: 4

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