A Valediction:
Forbidding Mourning
Summary
The speaker explains that he is forced to spend time apart
from his lover, but before he leaves, he tells her that their farewell should
not be the occasion for mourning and sorrow. In the same way that virtuous men
die mildly and without complaint, he says, so they should leave without
“tear-floods” and “sigh-tempests,” for to publicly announce their feelings in
such a way would profane their love. The speaker says that when the earth
moves, it brings “harms and fears,” but when the spheres experience “trepidation,”
though the impact is greater, it is also innocent. The love of “dull sublunary
lovers” cannot survive separation, but it removes that which constitutes the
love itself; but the love he shares with his beloved is so refined and
“Inter-assured of the mind” that they need not worry about missing “eyes, lips,
and hands.”
Though he must go, their souls are still one, and,
therefore, they are not enduring a breach, they are experiencing an
“expansion”; in the same way that gold can be stretched by beating it “to aery
thinness,” the soul they share will simply stretch to take in all the space
between them. If their souls are separate, he says, they are like the feet of a
compass: His lover’s soul is the fixed foot in the center, and his is the foot
that moves around it. The firmness of the center foot makes the circle that the
outer foot draws perfect: “Thy firmness makes my circle just, / And makes me
end, where I begun.”
Form
The nine stanzas of this Valediction are quite simple
compared to many of Donne’s poems, which utilize strange metrical patterns
overlaid jarringly on regular rhyme schemes. Here, each four-line stanza is
quite unadorned, with an ABAB rhyme scheme and an iambic tetrameter meter.
Commentary
“A Valediction: forbidding Mourning” is one of Donne’s most
famous and simplest poems and also probably his most direct statement of his
ideal of spiritual love. For all his erotic carnality in poems, such as “The
Flea,” Donne professed a devotion to a kind of spiritual love that transcended
the merely physical. Here, anticipating a physical separation from his beloved,
he invokes the nature of that spiritual love to ward off the “tear-floods” and
“sigh-tempests” that might otherwise attend on their farewell. The poem is
essentially a sequence of metaphors and comparisons, each describing a way of
looking at their separation that will help them to avoid the mourning forbidden
by the poem’s title.
First, the speaker says that their farewell should be as
mild as the uncomplaining deaths of virtuous men, for to weep would be
“profanation of our joys.” Next, the speaker compares harmful “Moving of th’
earth” to innocent “trepidation of the spheres,” equating the first with “dull
sublunary lovers’ love” and the second with their love, “Inter-assured of the
mind.” Like the rumbling earth, the dull sublunary (sublunary meaning literally
beneath the moon and also subject to the moon) lovers are all physical, unable
to experience separation without losing the sensation that comprises and
sustains their love. But the spiritual lovers “Care less, eyes, lips, and hands
to miss,” because, like the trepidation (vibration) of the spheres (the
concentric globes that surrounded the earth in ancient astronomy), their love
is not wholly physical. Also, like the trepidation of the spheres, their
movement will not have the harmful consequences of an earthquake.
The speaker then declares that, since the lovers’ two souls
are one, his departure will simply expand the area of their unified soul,
rather than cause a rift between them. If, however, their souls are “two”
instead of “one”, they are as the feet of a drafter’s compass, connected, with
the center foot fixing the orbit of the outer foot and helping it to describe a
perfect circle. The compass (the instrument used for drawing circles) is one of
Donne’s most famous metaphors, and it is the perfect image to encapsulate the
values of Donne’s spiritual love, which is balanced, symmetrical, intellectual,
serious, and beautiful in its polished simplicity.
Like many of Donne’s love poems (including “The Sun Rising” and
“The Canonization”), “A Valediction: forbidding Mourning” creates a dichotomy
between the common love of the everyday world and the uncommon love of the
speaker. Here, the speaker claims that to tell “the laity,” or the common
people, of his love would be to profane its sacred nature, and he is clearly
contemptuous of the dull sublunary love of other lovers. The effect of this
dichotomy is to create a kind of emotional aristocracy that is similar in form
to the political aristocracy with which Donne has had painfully bad luck
throughout his life and which he commented upon in poems, such as “The
Canonization”: This emotional aristocracy is similar in form to the political
one but utterly opposed to it in spirit. Few in number are the emotional
aristocrats who have access to the spiritual love of the spheres and the
compass; throughout all of Donne’s writing, the membership of this elite never
includes more than the speaker and his lover—or at the most, the speaker, his
lover, and the reader of the poem, who is called upon to sympathize with
Donne’s romantic plight.
The Sun Rising
Summary
Lying in bed with his lover, the speaker chides the rising
sun, calling it a “busy old fool,” and asking why it must bother them through
windows and curtains. Love is not subject to season or to time, he says, and he
admonishes the sun—the “Saucy pedantic wretch”—to go and bother late schoolboys
and sour apprentices, to tell the court-huntsmen that the King will ride, and
to call the country ants to their harvesting.
Why should the sun think that his beams are strong? The
speaker says that he could eclipse them simply by closing his eyes, except that
he does not want to lose sight of his beloved for even an instant. He asks the
sun—if the sun’s eyes have not been blinded by his lover’s eyes—to tell him by
late tomorrow whether the treasures of India are in the same place they
occupied yesterday or if they are now in bed with the speaker. He says that if
the sun asks about the kings he shined on yesterday, he will learn that they
all lie in bed with the speaker.
The speaker explains this claim by saying that his beloved
is like every country in the world, and he is like every king; nothing else is
real. Princes simply play at having countries; compared to what he has, all
honor is mimicry and all wealth is alchemy. The sun, the speaker says, is half
as happy as he and his lover are, for the fact that the world is contracted
into their bed makes the sun’s job much easier—in its old age, it desires ease,
and now all it has to do is shine on their bed and it shines on the whole
world. “This bed thy centre is,” the speaker tells the sun, “these walls, thy
sphere.”
Form
The three regular stanzas of “The Sun Rising” are each ten
lines long and follow a line-stress pattern of 4255445555—lines
one, five, and six are metered in iambic tetrameter, line two is in dimeter,
and lines three, four, and seven through ten are in pentameter. The rhyme
scheme in each stanza is ABBACDCDEE.
Commentary
One of Donne’s most charming and successful metaphysical
love poems, “The Sun Rising” is built around a few hyperbolic assertions—first,
that the sun is conscious and has the watchful personality of an old busybody;
second, that love, as the speaker puts it, “no season knows, nor clime, / Nor
hours, days, months, which are the rags of time”; third, that the speaker’s
love affair is so important to the universe that kings and princes simply copy
it, that the world is literally contained within their bedroom. Of course, each
of these assertions simply describes figuratively a state of feeling—to the
wakeful lover, the rising sun does seem like an intruder, irrelevant to the
operations of love; to the man in love, the bedroom can seem to enclose all the
matters in the world. The inspiration of this poem is to pretend that each of
these subjective states of feeling is an objective truth.
Accordingly, Donne endows his speaker with language implying
that what goes on in his head is primary over the world outside it; for
instance, in the second stanza, the speaker tells the sun that it is not so
powerful, since the speaker can cause an eclipse simply by closing his eyes.
This kind of heedless, joyful arrogance is perfectly tuned to the consciousness
of a new lover, and the speaker appropriately claims to have all the world’s
riches in his bed (India, he says, is not where the sun left it; it is in bed
with him). The speaker captures the essence of his feeling in the final stanza,
when, after taking pity on the sun and deciding to ease the burdens of his old
age, he declares “Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere.”
Batter My Heart
Batter
my heart, three-person'd God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
The gist of the poem is that the speaker believes himself to
be weak in faith and wants to be "conquered" by God. Let's break it
down into sections:
Batter
my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
Right now, the speaker feels like God smiles a little too
kindly on him, is a little too friendly and caring. In order to be "made
new," he needs God to break him down completely; in order to rise up, he
needs God to knock him over. There are a lot of contradictions and words with
double meanings in this poem. Donne also subverts the typical sonnet meter. Instead
of iambs (pairs of stressed and unstressed syllables), he uses many lines of
stress after stress: your FORCE to BREAK, BLOW, BURN and MAKE ME NEW. This
pounding beat is an aural reinforcement of the poem's message - he wants God to
break him down.
I,
like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Now the speaker switches to a "conceit" - an
extended, elaborate metaphor. He compares himself to a town that's been
conquered by another force. He wants to let God in to reclaim this town, but
his reason (the voice of God in his mind) is too weak, or has been deceived.
"I can't do this by myself," the speaker is saying,
"I
need a violent, conquering God to get me out of this."
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again
Here, the speaker uses the imagery of marriage. He loves God
and wants to be with him, but is completely given over to God's enemy (sin,
vice, evil, etc). The speaker asks God to break those bonds so that he can be
free to come back to God.
Take
me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
This last part gets really interesting. The speaker can't be
free unless he is imprisoned and "enthralled" (another term for being
held captive) by God. He can't be chaste unless he is "ravished" (a
nicer word for "raped") by God. The speaker is asking for violent
intervention from God to wipe him clean, make him new, set him free in faith.
Those interesting words also have another meaning - enthrall and ravish can
also refer to powerful feelings of astonishment and joy. Donne's word choice is
very deliberate. The speaker believes in a God that is powerful, strong, even
violent when needed, but that still causes an enormous sense of wonder in His
faithful.
The speaker begins by asking God (along with Jesus and the
Holy Ghost; together, they are the Trinity that makes up the Christian "three-personed
God") to attack his heart as if it were the gates of a fortress town. The
speaker wants God to enter his heart aggressively and violently, instead of
gently. Then, in line 5, the speaker explicitly likens himself to a captured town.
He tries to let God enter, but has trouble because the speaker's rational side
seems to be in control.
At the "turn" of the poem (see the "Form and Meter" section for more on the importance of the sonnet form and, specifically, the "turn"), the speaker admits that he loves God, and wants to be loved, but is tied down to God's unspecified "enemy" instead, whom we can think of as Satan, or possibly "reason." The speaker asks God to break the speaker's ties with the enemy, and to bring the speaker to Him, not letting him go free. He then explains why he wants all of this, reasoning with double meanings: he can't really be free unless God enslaves and excites him, and he can't refrain from sex unless God carries him away and delights him.
At the "turn" of the poem (see the "Form and Meter" section for more on the importance of the sonnet form and, specifically, the "turn"), the speaker admits that he loves God, and wants to be loved, but is tied down to God's unspecified "enemy" instead, whom we can think of as Satan, or possibly "reason." The speaker asks God to break the speaker's ties with the enemy, and to bring the speaker to Him, not letting him go free. He then explains why he wants all of this, reasoning with double meanings: he can't really be free unless God enslaves and excites him, and he can't refrain from sex unless God carries him away and delights him.
Lines 1-2
Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
- The speaker begins by asking God (along with Jesus and the Holy Ghost; together, they make up the "three-personed God") to attack his heart as if it were the gates of a fortress town.
- If you are caught up on the word "batter," note that back in medieval times, in order to break down the door of a fortress or castle, you'd have to use a battering ram. It's a huge pole of wood, possibly with a ram carving on the front.
- He asks God to "batter" his heart, as opposed to what God has been doing so far: just knocking, breathing, shining, and trying to help the speaker heal.
- Those actions are nice and all, but Donne wants something a little more intense. Scholars focus a lot on these verbs, and the words are certainly stressed in the line (notice how you accent these verbs and pause between them when you read the poem out loud), so let's break them down a bit.
- First of all, none of the verbs are particularly active. God asks to come in by knocking, which is nice, but he also just breathes and shines, two things that he might do out of necessity — not choice. When we breathe, it's normally not because we choose to, and the same applies to things that shine.
- The "mending" seems nice, but note that Donne says "seek to mend," and not just "mend." Does God really "seek to" do anything? Doesn't He just do it, if he's all-powerful?
- So, what about the specific actions? Are they particularly significant? Well lots of scholars think that the three verbs mirror the set-up of a "three-personed God" (the Christian notion of the Trinity). Thus, they associate the Father with power as he knocks but ought to break, the Holy Ghost with breath as he breathes but ought to blow like a strong wind, and the Son with light as he shines but ought to burn like fire.
- These actions make some sense as representative actions of each part of God, but other scholars argue that, based on the Bible, it isn't clear which member of the Trinity should be understood to do which of the actions. The confusion about which aspect of God does what appears to be purposeful.
- If the speaker wants to make things easier, he can very well put the verbs in the traditional order in which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are normally described.
- But, the Trinity isn't the only way to read those verbs. Some scholars point out that these terms (especially when combined with the other series of three verbs in line 4) all make sense in the context of metal- or glass-blowing (the process of shaping glass and metal objects). In this way, scholars see the speaker as making God into a craftsman who can, like a glassblower, "blow" life into the object (the speaker).
Lines 3-4
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
- Lines 3-4 continue much like lines 1-2, with the speaker asking God to treat him violently.
- He asks God to "bend your force," which may mean to "make use of your power."
- More importantly, even though it takes him four full lines, the speaker finally gets to the point of why he's telling God to do all this. His goal, as he puts it, is to "rise" and "stand" and become "new."
- This can work in two ways. First, there's the born-again angle, where the speaker asks to have a moment of religious epiphany. He wants to recognize God's power, but he worries that the only way God will get through to him is by doing something violent and completely overthrowing his life.
- On the other hand, "make me new" is probably a reference to the Christian idea that true happiness and salvation come only after death, and that, in order to get into Heaven, earthly life must be a continual act of suffering. That may be why our speaker wants to be abused and broken in the earthly world — so that he will be worthy for the afterlife.
- A quick note on the language here: read these lines aloud, and notice how the word "o'erthrow" makes you take a big pause and change the rhythm of your speaking, and how violent and intense those alliterated b-words are ("break, blow, burn"). These words get a lot of attention verbally, and it's a cool example of words' sounds reflecting their meaning. Onomatopoeia anyone?
Lines 5-6
I,
like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
- Here comes the explanation of that whole "battering" business. The speaker compares himself to a town that is captured or "usurped."
- The phrase "to another due" suggests that the town belongs to someone else, but it's tricky because we don't know who this "someone" could be.
- Whose was it originally, and who took over? The likely possibility is that it was originally God's, and it was subsequently taken over by another, but that doesn't help us figure out who the "other" is.
- In any case, the speaker wants to let God in, but he's unsuccessful so far.
- These lines are interesting in part because, unlike anywhere else in the rest of the poem, Donne actually uses a simile here instead of a metaphor. Instead of saying, "I am a usurped town," he leaves more room between himself and the town by only saying that they're similar.
- What's the big deal? Well, it suggests that the speaker is conscious of how unrealistic his requests are. Where, in the first few lines he directs God to overthrow, break, blow, and burn him, it's not until this line that we know he's being metaphorical (instead of actually wanting to be broken, burned, and so forth).
- The "oh" in line 6 is another linguistic choice worth mentioning. There are two ways we might see this:
- First, we can read it as the only moment of truly honest self-expression in the poem, where the speaker lets his words go without careful control. In other words, the "oh" is the only word in the poem that isn't actually a word – it's more of a sound, a sigh, or an exclamation. It's a different kind of language, and one we don't see elsewhere in the poem.
- If we read it as a sigh, it might lend this line some extra emotional pull if he seems sad that he can't let God in.
- On the other hand, you might think the "oh" is theatrical and overly dramatic, like a "woe-is-me!" moment.
Lines 7-8
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
- Our bet is that these are the trickiest lines in the poem for you. Us too. They're weird, but it helps to put them into simple English: "Reason, my local ruler who works for you, should be defending me, but he was captured, and revealed himself to be weak or unfaithful."
- We assume that the "you" to whom Reason is supposed to report is God.
- The whole idea guiding these lines is that God gave us reason (rationality) to defend ourselves from evil, but now the speaker's reason seems to have turned on God (or is just incapable of warding off evil), so the speaker is having trouble showing his faith in God.
- As we discuss in the "Speaker" section, the sense of entitlement is interesting. Check out the back-to-back "me's" and the "should" in "Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend." It's all about the speaker's self-interest, and he sounds like a spoiled little kid: "Me! Me! You should defend me!"
- And, if we zoom out a bit, why on earth is he treating his ability to reason as if it were a real person? The answer may be: so that he can pass the buck and blame this other person (who's really God's responsibility, according to the speaker).
- If you think about it, the speaker actually blames God, through his representative (Reason) for the speaker turning over to the enemy's side.
Lines 9-10
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
- When you get to line 9 of a sonnet, you know that you have to do a little extra work, since the ninth line of a sonnet traditionally marks the "turn" in the poem, where the problem set up in the first 8 lines begins to move towards a solution.
- To be honest, though, this line doesn't make for much of a turn at all. The simile of the fortress ends here (until it's picked up again at "imprison"), but this line, like those before it, mainly furthers the development of the speaker's desired relationship with God.
- He hints at no solution, but the line does mark a shift in tone. The speaker seems to be a bit more candid and personal here, and he abandons some of the similes and metaphors that he uses before. "Yet dearly I love you" is the most straightforward line we've had so far.
- "And would be loved fain," though, is a continuation of the kind of self-centeredness we see in lines 7-8. He's saying "I'd be happy to be loved," just like you'd tell a friend "I'd be happy to help" – he makes it sound a little like he's doing God a favor.
- What's more, the speaker quickly drops the straight-talk, and goes back into another metaphor: he says he's "betroth'd," or engaged to marry, the "enemy."
- This word "enemy" is troublesome, because we don't know who it is. There's no one right answer here, but our speaker may be referring to Satan.
- The question is, why did the speaker choose the metaphor of a wedding engagement? Why didn't he just say, "I'm under the Devil's control, so help free me?"
- Perhaps an engagement implies that the speaker is cool with the whole thing and isn't forced into this relationship with the enemy. Unlike in lines 5-8, where the speaker blamed Reason for losing touch with God, here he seems to suggest that it is actually kind of his fault, since he agrees to an engagement with the "enemy."
Lines 11-12
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
- Line 11 continues the train of thought in line 10, asking God to help him get out of this close engagement with the enemy. He wants God to help him break the wedding "knot" he tied when he was "betroth'd," and take him away from the enemy.
- What's absolutely key here is the word "again" – does it mean this isn't the first time the speaker needed to ask God for help in getting away from the Devil?
- All of a sudden, we learn that these pleas to God may be a frequent occurrence. This can have a major impact on our understanding of the poem. The speaker begins to look less like a poor guy who's all-of-a-sudden blurting out his love for God the only way he knows how -- and more like a con-artist who makes it seem like he's desperately in need, when, in fact, he's been down this road a number of times.
- But, instead of thinking that the speaker has wanted a wedding knot broken before, we might read "again" as referring to another time when God had to break a knot. (As if the speaker were saying, "Sorry, God, you have to go through that whole knot-breaking thing again.")
- By this logic, "again" could be a reference to the moment in Genesis (in the Old Testament) when God expels Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden because they follow Satan’s advice. This way, when the speaker says, "Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again," he seems to say "either divorce/untie me from Satan, or you'll have to break the knot between us, just as you did with Adam."
- In line 12 (and on into line 13), the speaker seems to bring back the castle siege metaphor one last time with "imprison," and rekindles the earlier debate about who had captured (or imprisoned) the town in the first place.
- Here, again, the speaker refuses to make things clear, first asking God to imprison him, but only so that he can be free. This all goes back to the Christian idea that a human must to suffer in order to get to Heaven, and reminds us again that violence and aggressive behavior aren't necessarily bad things in this poem, so long as God is in the driver’s seat.
Lines 13-14
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
- These last two lines make it clear that the speaker loves those paradoxes and double meanings that we struggle with all along. Both lines take the form of "If you don't ______, I can't be ______," but the speaker fills in that first blank with double entendres (words or phrases with two possible meanings).
- The first can be read as "If you don't excite me, I can't be free." If we read it that way, it's possible that "excite" has sexual connotations, and this makes sense in light of the following line.
- But, we can also read line 13 as, "If you don't enslave me, I can't be free." Back in the day, "enthrall" would also mean "enslave," so we should be aware of that possibility.
- We can read line 14 as, "If you don't fill me with delight, I will never be able to refrain from sex." Like "excite" in line 13, "fill me with delight" in this reading might carry some sexual connotations.
- These lines leave us with some major paradoxes, refusing to pin down exactly what the speaker wants from God.
- As we see it, it seems that the speaker wants better access to God, and having been unsuccessful in the past, demands that God reveal himself forcefully and powerfully.
- In other words, the only way the speaker and his stubborn "reason" will be convinced of God's power is to see an epic example of it. What's more, the speaker desperately wants to be convinced, so he can be “saved.”
- Still, it's hard to make the last line fit, mainly because you can't really become chaste. Either the speaker is and always has been chaste, in which case he wouldn't have to worry about it, or he's had sex but now wants to abstain.
- But, if he wants to abstain, is more sex really the prescription?
- And, if he wants this divine sexual encounter so much, then wouldn't that contradict the idea that it is "rape"?
- In the end, then, we might come to the conclusion that talking about God in human terms and metaphors actually doesn't make sense. The kinds of rewards and interactions that God can provide simply can't be described properly in human language, and that's why the speaker gets so caught up in paradox and mixed metaphors.
