A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

And whisper to their souls, to go,

Whilst some of their sad friends doe 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 refined

That we 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 fixed foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if th’ other do.

And though it in the center sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans, and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as it 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.


The poet talks about love, but about a special kind of love. He talks about love that does not come to everybody maybe in their entire life. The poet does not actually mention the word love in the poem, but he uses metaphors to lead us to such a conclusion. Also, the poem has its special syntax that is maintained throughout the whole poem.
The biggest metaphor that the poet uses is about compasses. He talks how the two lovers are in the relationship to each other as the legs of the compasses are. He describes how they maybe far from each other but still together. His metaphors are incredible. In the very beginning the poet talks about love from the eyes of other people. He describes how other people think about love. Later in the poem he compares his love to the love of other people. He describes his love as the most pure love. The poet talks about a difference between passion and pure love because sometimes people mistake simple passion for real love.
Moreover, the poem includes the syntax that is perfectly continued till the end of the poem. The author chose each word to complete the sentence and to rhyme the sound. Syntax in a poem is very important and especially in a love poem. A love poem is supposed to flow and syntax helps to make it true.