A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

John Donne


As virtuous men pass mildly away,
      And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends so 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 our love.


Movement 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
Absence, 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-assured 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 grows erect as that comes home.


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.

Home About What's New Obsessions Writing Gifts and Awards

Pictures Favorite Links Good Causes Guestbook E-mail