A+Valediction+Forbidding+Mourning

**Genre/ influence:** Love poem
====**Poetic Devices:** Ballad: gently, slowly moving you to feel the emotion behind it. Rhyme scheme is consistent, and the mood is raw emotion. 9 quatrain iambic pentameter. Written in a ABAB rhyme scheme.====

**Observations:** “( Whose soule is sense)” brackets indicate casuality, other people’s love doesn’t matter to him. “A love so much refin’d” implies the pure love, which is then tied into gold.
By: Michelle Vallance

=COMMENTARY ANALYSIS= There were no questions for this poem; here is an analysis and small summary of the Commentary (page 266-267)


 * ==== This poem was written by John Donne to his wife upon his departure to France during the 1600’s. A valediction is a parting or a farewell, which is exactly what Donne was aiming to achieve as he left for a voyage across the sea. There were dangers of sea travel and this ballad encompasses the idea that they may never see each other again; this could be their last farewell. ====
 * ==== People during this period believed that God and the angels controlled the universe and that anything below the orbit of the moon was inept to change and was flawed. Anything beyond the moon was considered to be absolute. ====
 * ==== The speaker focuses on defining the meaning of love to his partner, regardless of the separation they may endure by using comparisons. ====
 * ==== Compares the distance from his lover to the separation of a loyal man’s soul at his death (1-2) ====
 * ==== Melting of metals properly so they don’t splash – nothing could split them apart no matter what (5-8) ====
 * ==== The movement of the cosmos and the earth – that things may change but there love will always be there (9-10) ====
 * ==== “Stiff twin compasses” (26) – when one uses a compass to draw a circle, the two points are apart until the circle is completely drawn, and then the points are brought together – a circle, to Donne, represented perfection and wholeness. ====

//Here is a brief summary of the quatrains in the poem, nine in total, including underlying meanings (labelled A-I)//


 * **A** - virtuous men would not pass silently without mourning
 * **B** - don't mourn because it would diminish their love for eachother
 * **C & D** - true love is not dependant on having the person physically there
 * **E** - don't need to mourn if they will be reunited in the afterlife
 * **F** - love has no beginning or end - like a wedding ring, continuous circle
 * **G -** the woman mist be the strength of the compass (relationship) to remain in place of home
 * **H** - as he returns, it is no longer stretched out (the compass) and they are reunited as the points come together
 * **I** - things come full circle - committed love, compensated in the afterlife

//BY: TAYLOR DAVIDSON//