The Metaphysicals - John Donne

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning


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:


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


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.


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


But we by a love, so much refined,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.


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.


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 th'other do.


And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grow erect, as that comes home.


Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like the other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begun.


-John Donne

I actually quite like this poem because it's cute.  Well not only that, I appreciate all the imagery and symbolism woven throughout it.  I also appreciate that the speaker doesn't only praise the physical love and attributes of their love, but rather the mental and spiritual.

The speaker and his beloved have a love "inter-assurèd of the mind" (19) and although they enjoy the physical presence of one another, they can live without it.  When they are separated they "make no noise, / No tear-floods, nor sigh tempests move" (5-6) because their love is more than physical.  The speaker explains that their love is celestial, like the "trepidation of the spheres" (11).  The parting of the some is likened to a tragedy such as the "moving of th' earth" (9), however the speaker states that the love he and his beloved share is not like this, and they will endure "but an expansion/ like gold to airy thinness beat" (24).  He continues to tell his beloved that her "soul the fixed foot" (26) of the compass holds him steady on his travels.  After it is used the compass leg "grows erect, as that comes home" (32) just as the speaker will return to his beloved.  While the speaker and his beloved are two different people, they are "as stiff twin compasses are two" (26).  They can part, but in the end, always will return to one another, and are two connected souls.

The use of conceits and references to science are also present throughout the poem. The beating of "gold to airy thinness" (24) is a reference to metalworking and goldsmithing which represents the way the love of the speaker and his beloved can stretch and expand.  And their is the famous conceit of the compass throughout the last three stanzas, representing the two lovers and the way they are connected whether they be physically close or far away.  It also represents the way the two depend on each other, just as the two legs of a compass need each other to create a perfect circle.

First Review!! Sonnet 79 by Spenser

So it's time to write the first review.  And I did pick a sonnet!  Sonnet 79 by Edmund Spenser.  And so you don't need to go look it up, here it is.

Men call you fair, and you do credit it,
For that yourself you daily such do see;
But the true fair, that is the gentle wit
And virtuous mind, is much more praised of me.
For all the rest, however fair it be,
Shall turn to naught and lose that glorious hue;
But only that is permanent and free
From frail corruption that doth flesh ensue,
That is true beauty; that doth argue you
To be divine and born of heavenly see;
Derived from that fair Spirit, from whom all true
And perfect beauty did at first proceed:
He only fair, and what he fair hath made;
All other fair, like flowers, untimely fade.

I personally love this sonnet, and I am not a huge fan of sonnets.  I find them rather constricting and I find that fourteen lines is an awkward number.  I much prefer ballads because of their musicality and the fact that they have no set length or number of stanzas, but they still have some structure. However, I actually like the Spenserian sonnets a lot, at least those which I have read.  They really aren't that much different from a Shakespearean sonnet, other than the rhyme scheme, which is a little more difficult, as it is abab bcbc cdcd ee, as opposed to the more common, abab cdcd efef gg.  This requires a little more effort to use certain rhymes twice as often as they traditionally were.  Moreover I just like the message of the sonnet.  The speaker is talking to a woman, and a woman who is considered quite beautiful.  He admits that yes, she is beautiful, however the kind of beauty that he truly admires is the beauty of the mind, and the personality, because that doesn't fade, unlike physical beauty, which fades with age.  It's not like no one has ever heard "It's what's inside that counts" time and time again, but the fact that it is done in such a beautiful and poetic way makes it less cliché.  The poem itself just rolls of the tongue in a pleasant way and is enjoyable to read.

All things considered, what I like the most about this sonnet is that it doesn't hold up the physical beauty of the beloved as the most important thing, but that it speaks of the importance of the mind and personality.  And I also like it because it is a beautiful poem.