A (Preliminary) Formal Analysis: Forbidding Mourning

Preliminary Formal Analysis of John Donne's (A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning)

1. Genre - Considering the rather personal nature of the lines and stanzas in this poem, its genre is a lyrical poem, one which focuses on the speaker's own emotions, feelings, inner thoughts, etc. The line that most indicates this reading is the final stanza, which reads:
"Such wilt thou be to mee, who must
Like the other foot, obliquely runne
Thy firmnes drawes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begunne."

2. Speaker/Narrator - The narrator in this piece does not necessarily have to be Donne himself; he could be portraying the general emotional state of any lover at their lovers' parting. The ambiguity of the narrator is what makes this poem more universal in its meaning and message. "So let us melt, and make no noise..."

3. Setting - The setting is quite ambiguous, allowing any and all people who know the pain of lost love, regardless of what environment or country they live in, to understand Donne's message and relate to it.

4. Structure - The poem is structured in stanzas of four lines each, with the rhyme scheme being consistently ABAB through each and every stanza, which gives a feeling of solidarity and consistency to the speaker's thoughts.

5. Character - Much like the analysis of the speaker, the characters portrayed in this poem are two lovers at the moment of their parting. They haven't quite stopped loving each other, as evidenced by the line "But we by a love, so much refin'd // That our selves know not what it is."

6. Audience - As with the setting, the audience is never strictly defined, but from the almost universally relatable nature of the poem, one can assume that the audience could be anyone and everyone who knows the pain of parting from a lover.

7. Tone - The title proclaims the piece to be on the subject of mourning, and the lines of the poem themselves emphasize this theme. Some lines that sound mournful and melancholy are:
"Dull sublunary lovers love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it."

8. Metaphor - The theme of death and mourning is a metaphor in the case of this poem, as the first line states "As virtuous men pass mildly away," but Donne uses death as a comparison for the death of love described in the rest of the stanzas.

9. Thesis - It's unclear whether a poem can truly have a thesis or not, but in this case the thesis could be said to be either the meaning of the poem as a whole or the main point. The final two lines are where one can find this point the best, where it says "Thy firmnes drawes my circle just // And makes me end where I begunne." The point in these lines is that losing love only makes him go backwards, not moving forward like he should be.

10. Plot - As with the thesis, poetry does not necessarily have a plot to it, which is the case with this poem. Instead of a plot, the poem takes a sort of snapshot of the speaker's reality: the moment of his and his lover's parting. The thoughts at this exact point make the moment more real to the audience.