I. Introduction
A. Physical love is great and may last for a while, but spiritual love will last forever.
B. In the Poem, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”, by John Donne, the theme discusses how physical love may be just lust and may not last long and that spiritual love is beyond that.
C. Their love is greater than ordinary lover’s love. It goes beyond just the physical and Donne shows this through metaphysical conceits.
II. Body Paragraph 1
A. Donne uses metaphysical conceit to show that him and his wife will always be together.
1. When you have a spiritual love, distance doesn’t matter.
a. “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 the other do” (Donne
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Just like these compass points, Donne and his wife remain irremovably connected even as he moves away. He’ll always return to where he begun, linked to her always.
B. John Pipkin gives his thoughts on what he thinks these lines mean.
1. He explains so well how Donne and his wife are inseparable.
a. “Like the compasses, their two souls are joined at the top, reminding us that their love is a spiritual union interassured of the mind” (Pipkin, Poetry for Students 203).
b. Pipkin is just saying how Donne and his wife’s love is not breakable by distance.
C. Donne’s use of the metaphysical conceit of the two compasses shows how strong his love for his wife was.
III. Body Paragraph 2
A. Donne uses metaphysical conceit to show that even though they are physically separated, they are not spiritually separated.
1. Spiritual love doesn’t break, just expands however far the distance is.
a. “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” (Donne
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“When he leaves on his journey,that one soul will not tear in two; instead, it is flexible enough that it will actually expand” (Pipkin, Poetry for Students 203).
b. He’s just saying that they’re so close that their love won’t break, it will just expand like gold does.
C. Donne’s metaphysical conceit explains so well how their love, no matter how far it’s stretched out, will always be strong enough not to break.
III. Body Paragraph 3
A. The third metaphysical conceit shows that Donne wants to part from his wife without all the attention and noise.
1. Crying for such a small departure cheapens the love and the marriage.
a. “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” (Donne 9).
b. Earthquakes attract a great deal of attention, but trepidation of the spheres, though involving greater forces, are imperceptible and harmless.
B. Pipkin contrasts these things that happen on earth with those in heaven.
1. He explains how an earthquake on earth is less important than a trembling of the whole universe.
a. “…a trembling or vibration of the whole universe, is far more significant…” (Pipkin, Poetry for Students 202).
b. Something that is not seen or felt is far more significant than something that is seen and