A Valediction : Forbidding Mourning is a poem written by English poet and Scholar, John Donne. The poem was written in 1611 and it was published posthumously which means it was posted after the death of poet.
Valediction Forbidding Mourning Summary By John Donne
Summary of A Valediction Forbidding Mourning By John Donne
A Valediction is 36 lines poem divided into nine quatrains. The main theme of poem “ A Valediction” is Love and Distance.
A Valediction means an action of saying farewell speech. When someone goes for long journey and before going the speech he writes to his friends and family is known as valediction speech. In the poem, poet is going away from his beloved as he is going for a long journey, he asks his beloved not to cry because their love is not just physical love but also spiritual love of two souls. How can we separate from each other if our souls are connected spiritually.
A death comes to religious men very quietly as they themselves tells to their own souls to left the body and go forward. Let be free from this life. While some of their sad friends discuss that their souls have left the body while few doesn’t believe that they have gone. The noble men dies with peace without fearing death.
So let be us like the noble men and say farewell to each other like them, we should not cry and nor sigh tempests move. We should separate peacefully without shedding tears and we don’t need to show our love to the world.
By crying in front of everyone and telling them about about our love, we are degrading and insulting our love. We should not display our love to anyone and keep it very private. By crying in front of everyone we are making entertainment of our love.
The poet now comparing his love with planets movements as he believes their love is that much significant that people should not notice it. While ordinary people love are like earthquake which catches everyone attention.
The love of boring and ordinary people is completely physical because it only exist because of their senses. Due to this their love can’t handle distances, they can’t live without their love and as distance come between their love, it breaks. The poet is trying to say if love is only based on physical love then it would break if distance happen between them.
But our love is very special and refined that we don’t know to assure our mind and don’t know how to miss someone eyes, lips and hands. We don’t know how to miss someone’s body. We doesn’t know these things because our love is not physical as we don’t miss each other body, we only miss souls of each other.
Through spiritual love our two souls have become a finite soul, though I have to go but our my departure will not break our love and it won’t separate us. But our love will expand and become more and more stronger.
If two lovers soul have not became one soul then their soul is attached like compass legs, they have strong connection and they will live together forever. Your soul is like compass fixed foot which don’t want to move but if it second legs move then it adjust itself accordingly.
The poet is explaining to his beloved that we both are like compass legs and we won’t be far away as we are connected to each other like a compass. You will always attracted to me like one of compass foot even if I change the position of my one foot.
You are like stationery compass foots which will lean towards me and stay connected to me when I go far away. You will never let me go away like stationery compass foot. You will always keep connection with me no matter wherever I go. Your fixed point complete this journey of me and makes me end from where I begun.
Even though there will be distances between us because of my this journey but I will always returns to you like compass foot return to its second leg after completing the circle. Here poet is trying to say that as soon as his journey will complete he will returns to his beloved wife. So stop shedding tears you dear wife because our love is greater than anything else in the world.