A Valediction: Forbidding Mour

            
             In the poem "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,"" the author, John Donne, creates a dichotomy between the common love of the everyday world and the uncommon love of the speaker. Essentially, this is a poem that forms a sequence of metaphors and comparisons, each describing a way of looking at the separation between two lovers and how they will avoid the mourning forbidden by the poem's title. The poem is broken up into nine stanzas, each stanza being four lines, with an ABAB rhyme scheme and an iambic tetrameter meter. .
             The poem begins with some very descriptive imagery. "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."" As a virtuous man dies, he knows that he has reconciled himself to God and will therefore be accepted into heaven. Knowing this, he dies in peace and calm, and those who mourning his death are sad but not anguished. In the same way, when two virtuous lovers part, there is no pain, because they know that each will be true to the other, even when they are apart. .
             Donne says that the people who are mourning for him do so quietly, as so they do not disturb him. In the same sense, too much outward expression of emotions on the part of one lover would just disturb the other, bringing more anguish to an already sad situation. To show this he writes, "So let us melt, and make no noise/ No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move."" Here Donne uses the imagery of weather to show that when the time comes for him to be parted from his love, he too will bear it with the quiet dignity of a dying man - no flood of tears, nor tempests of sighs. .
             At the end of stanza 2, Donne shows his disapproval of the love of the rest of the population. "Twere profanation of our joys/ To tell the laity our love."" Donne uses "the laity- to make a distinction between him and the common people.