We're Not Done Here

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

1.       Genre. This is a poem of the lyric genre, and therefore shows the emotions and affections of an individual speaker, much like a song. The focus remains on the speaker’s thoughts for the duration of the poem, and is very personally emotional:

      Such wilt thou be to me, who must

      Like th’other foot, obliquely runne;

      Thy firmness drawes my circle just,

      And makes me end, where I begunne.

2.       Narrator. The narrator of this poem is someone (presumably a man, perhaps Donne) about to be parted with someone else. He seems to be speaking to them, and telling them that “As virtuous men pass mildly by…so let us melt, and make no noise”—that they should pass as quietly as stately men.

3.       Plot. This text is more based upon one speaker’s spouting of apparent wisdom than any kind of integral plot. The only “plot” that is truly noticeable seems to be the narrator speaking to a listener (perhaps a lover), and really only serves as the excuse (for honest lack of a better term) for the poem to be written in the first place. We only briefly recognize that he is in fact speaking to someone, for example, when we read “But we by a love, so much refin’d,/That our selves know not what it is.”

4.       Character. It is interesting how much a reader can glean about the characters represented in this poem, considering how little reference there actually is to them. We see two lovers, perhaps frightened of their parting, however, deciding that tears and loud pain are not for them. “Our two soules therefore, which are one,/Though I must goe, endure not yet/A breach…”

5.       Setting. Honestly, the setting for this text could be placed anywhere in which its words remain valuable. There is no apparent or even suggested setting of events, nor, for that matter, even a suggestion of gender or status at all for either character. The narrator themself says, at the very end, that it is like a cycle: “They firmnes drawes my circle just,/And makes me end, where I begunne.”

6.       Imagery. Interestingly (and perhaps a tiny bit misleadingly) Donne titles this poem “Forbidding Mourning” and then goes immediately into talking about dead people: “As virtuous men passe mildly away…” However, with the analogy he ends up drawing, this image does make sense.

7.       Figurative Language. Much of what poets say is figurative, to make a large and perhaps uneducated generalization. This poem, however, follows that generalization, and uses many a simile. “Our two soules…endure not yet,/A breach, but at expansion,/Like gold to ayery thinnesse beate.”

8.       Audiences. One interesting thing about this poem is that fact that the narrator (or poet) are speaking to, in a way, two audiences. In this poem, Donne is playing a character, so to speak, of someone wishing for their lover to no longer mourn, while he himself is writer for a much broader audience—us. Donne, of course, is aware of this, and deliberately slips in enough clues to let his reading audience understand what is going on between his suggested characters within this poem.

9.       Tone and Style. The overall tone of this text is one of a melancholy yet hopeful feeling. Donne uses exaggeratedly sad or grand analogies to describe an almost mundane (to the audience, at least) happening—lovers parted. While it is rather flowery and, almost, reads lavishly in place, Donne is able to retain a sense of straightforward seriousness throughout.

10.    Persuasion and Argumentation. To be honest, if I was the lover of whoever this narrator is, I would probably be won over. Not even because what he says is drippy (which it is) but because he puts up a fairly sound argument. Donne puts just enough sappiness, flattery and honesty into this poem to make it the perfect lover-trap. In reference to their souls, he says, “Yet when the other far doth rome,/It leanes, and hearkens after it,/And growes erect, as that comes home.”