John Donne :-
He was born in London in 1573. His father was a wealthy merchant. He was educated in their beliefs before going to Oxford and Cambridge.
Donne was ambitious about his writings as a career but this was ruined by a runaway marriage. His writings were published after his death. He wrote this poem for his wife, when he was going to France with sir Robert Duery.
If you want to read the poem Click here
A valediction forbidding mourning:-
Stanza no 1 :-
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:
Paraphrase:-
As like when the good people are about to die and they ordered their soul to go. It occurs so slowly and unnoticed that some of their friends say that he is alive and breathing and some say he is dead.
Stanza no 2:-
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.
Paraphrase:-
Let us be apart without making any noise , without any floods of tears and storm of sighs and temptations. It will abandon the sacrilege of our Love by telling common people about our eternal love.
Stanza no 3:-
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.
Paraphrase:-
The earthquake bring disasters and fear to ordinary human, which they notice and count the harms of disasters. But they are unaware of the disastrous effect of heavenly bodies like stars and Cosmos during their movement.
Stanza no 4:-
Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
Paraphrase:-
Bored and ordinary lovers cannot accept their separation because their love is physical and when the base of their love which is physicality, they can't endure it.
Stanza no 5 :-
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
Paraphrase:-
But our love is so pure and spiritual that we ourself doesn't know what it is. We are so assured that among us the physical contact doesn't matter. We doesn't care about lips, eyes and hands in hands.
Stanza no 6:-
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.
Paraphrase:-
We both have two souls which are unified by love. I must go, but the space between us is filled by our expanded souls like a precious gold metal expanded by hammering.
Stanza no 7:-
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.
Paraphrase:-
If our souls are assumed to be individuals then they are like the two feet of compass. Your soul is like the fixed foot which doesn't move around but it follow the other.
Stanza no 8:-
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.
Paraphrase:-
The fix foot of compass is in the centre but when the other foot move around it bend towards it, and follows it. It stand tall when the other moving foot comes back.
Stanza no 9:-
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.
Paraphrase:-
You are like that fix to me which compels me to move in a circular path. Your loyalty makes my path exactly perfect and make me to home, from where I had started.
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