As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," 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
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd 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 aery 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 th' 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.
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
The author John Donne's poem is about a man talking about his lover. You can see this because it says "Dull sublunary lovers' love". It seems as if the speaker is leaving their loved one when the poem mentions
ReplyDelete"If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;" you can see they are parting but no matter what they still love eachother. The poem talks about parting becuase the speaker says compass and that seems to be a symbol of leaving. It seems that the speaker goes back to see their loved one because towards the end "And grows erect, as that comes home." So this means that he must do some kind of job that consists of him/she leaving and then coming back to see their loved one. In the last stanza you relize its something that happens consistintly because the speaker says this: "And makes me end where I begun" refering to that they are going back to the same thing as the beginning.
One of the things that stood out to me in this poem is how he shows a man dying: “virtuous men pass mildly away, and whisper to their souls to go”, to me it’s a great apostrophe because of how he says that the man is talking to his soul and it shows that the person is close to his death. Also, another important thing in this 1st stanza is that the other men are saying that he’s taking his last breath and others are lamenting it by exclaiming no. This demonstrates that a man is dying. In the third stanza he says “lovers’ love…cannot admit absence”, and this says that the love that they had won’t be forgotten, that it’s going to stay with them beyond life. Another part of the poem says “But we by a love so much refined,That ourselves know not what it is”, is suggesting that love Is great and that even after they die they are going to be together and that they don’t know what is that feeling that they have is.
ReplyDeleteJohn Donne is trying to show that long distance relationship can work if you really love the other person. In this poem the author shows how the character writes to each other a letter telling them how much they miss each other. They express they love toward each other through their soul and the close bond they have to each other. In the beginning of the poem the character explains how lucky he must be and the wishing to be with his love. In the end of the poem the author explains that how he not worries about him that he will soon be with the women he loves and admires.
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