JOHN DONNE (1572-1631)
A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING
MOURNING
ANALISI STRUTTURALE
1
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
2
And whisper to their souls, to go,
3 Whilst some of
their sad friends do say,
4
"The breath goes now," and some say, "No:"
5
So let us melt, and make no noise,
6
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
7 'Twere
profanation of our joys
8 To
tell the laity our love.
9
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;
10
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
11
But trepidation of the spheres,
12
Though greater far, is innocent.
13
Dull sublunary lovers' love
14
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
15
Absence, because it doth remove
16
Those things which elemented it.
17
But we by a love so much refin'd,
18 That
ourselves know not what it is,
19
Inter-assured of the mind,
20
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
21 Our two souls
therefore, which are one,
22 Though I
must go, endure not yet
23 A breach, but an expansion,
24
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
25 If they be two, they are
two so
26 As stiff twin compasses are two;
27
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
28
To move, but doth, if the' other do.
29 And though it in the
centre sit,
30 Yet when the other far
doth roam,
31 It leans, and hearkens after it,
32
And grows erect, as that comes home.
33 Such wilt thou be to
me, who must
34 Like th' other foot,
obliquely run;
35 Thy firmness makes my circle just,
36
And makes me end, where I begun.
NOTES
- Form:
-
ababcdcd
- 1.
-
According to Izaak
Walton, addressed by Donne to his wife when he was about to set
out for France in 1612.
- 9.
-
Moving of th' earth:
earthquake.
- 11.
-
trepidation of the
spheres. The precession of the equinoxes under the Ptolemaic system
was explained as caused by the shaking or trepidation of the outermost,
crystalline sphere of the universe.
- 12.
-
innocent: harmless.
- 13.
-
sublunary: earthly;
everything below the moon was thought subject to change; above it
was "unchangeable firmament,'' as Donne says in "The Fever,"
playing with the same metaphor.
- 14.
-
Whose soul is sense:
see note on "The Ecstasy," lines 53-56.
- 16.
-
elemented: were the
elements of, composed.
- 19.
-
Inter-assured of the
mind. "For we consist of three parts, a Soul and Body, and
Minde: which [mind] I call those affections and thoughts and passions
which neither soul nor body hath alone but have been begotten by
their communication, as Musique results out of our breath and a
cornet" (Donne).
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