Analysis of A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
John Donne 1572 (London) – 1631 (London)
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:'
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.
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.
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 refin'd,
That ourselves 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 fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the' other do.
And though it in the centre 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.
Scheme | ABAB CDCE FXFX EGDG HXHX IXIX BJBJ GKGK LILI |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (56%) |
Metre | 1100111001 01011111 11111111 01110111 11110111 1111111 10101101 110100101 1011111101 11011101 1010101 11011100 11101 11111001 10011101 11111 111011101 100111111 0101101 11110111 10111111 11110111 0111010 11110101 11111111 111111 11011111 111110101 01100101 11010111 11010101 01011111 11111111 1111010101 11011101 01111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,295 |
Words | 238 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 105 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 26 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 21, 2023
- 1:11 min read
- 174 Views
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