A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING. by John Donne 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. 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. I love this poem, it's so true, and I'm so glad Ms. Young read it to us in English Lit last year, or I would have passed over it completely. It's great that a poem written by this man hundreds of years ago still holds true today, just modernize the words and you have 99% of the relationships in school...absence, 'cause it doth remove the thing which elemented it...or, if the couples didn't see each other every day and make out in the halls, they'd have nothing at all, there's no real love there. My profound thought of the day lol, brought on because I heard something about Donne today, and because I'm tired of seeing people all over each other at school. Later!