poetry texts, poem archive at plagiarist.com

John Donne’s A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING MOURNING

Walton’s Life of Donne says that this farewell poem was given by Donne to Anne More, his wife, when he left for France in 1611. However, the poem compares the parting of the two persons with death.
The 1st stanza puts the parting of the lovers in a holy context. The persons parting from this world are virtuous men. The dying persons and their friends do haste. This implies the bliss of the world hereafter for the parting ones.
The lovers are, nevertheless, too securely united for protestations and commotion to be in place. They separate with no noise; they shed no tears, and they don’t regret the loss at all. If they were to talk about their love to others, it would be profanation.
The earthquakes bring harm and fear, and they put the people into thinking of the consequent horrors. However, the motions of the outer spheres cause no harms, although they are much greater than the earth. So parting which brings about only such movement in their love need not be dreaded.
The foolish and stupid love of the lovers is subject to interception, as the sea under the moon is subject to ebb and flow. In that sort of love the senses attempt to rule, and the separation cannot be tolerated because that takes away the very elements (in sense and appetite) that make up such love.
In contrast to those profane lovers, the speaker and his beloved have made their love resort to the true nature of love that is even incomprehensive to them. These lovers are made safe each by the other and guaranteed mutual understanding and possession. They suffer less from not being able to see and touch one another.
The two souls of the lovers, which have become one, will bear no separation; instead, the breach will be a blow on them to get expanded in the same way that the gold is expanded through beating.
The 7th stanza introduces the image of a compass with two legs. The two legs are separated from each other to draw a circle, which is an emblem of perfection. The soul of the beloved is the fixed leg and the lover is the moving leg. The movement of the lover-leg is in harmony with the situation at hand.
The fixed leg of the compass sits in the center of the circle, but it inclines toward the moving leg as if it listened attentively when it runs round the fixed one. The fixed leg becomes upright again when the other one draws closer and approaches as though in ease and content and happy expectation. The suggestion of getting united after the separation is implied by the legs of a compass getting folded.
The last stanza can be read either as the completion of a circle or of the closing of the compass when its task is done. Each seems equally relevant. Circles are emblematic of perfection. In Plato’s Timaeus, well known for Donne, the Creator gave the world, as the fairest and most perfect of intelligent beings, the form of a globe. Moreover, the circle is the emblem of the soul’s proper course.
The two final lines are saying that it is her steadfastness that makes the courses of his soul be as they should be and makes him in the end return whence he begun. The word ‘begun’ echoes the thought of the title. The speaker forbids his beloved to mourn after he has gone.

Hymn To God, My God, In My Sickness
Since I am coming to that holy room
Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be thy music; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before.

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie
Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown
That this is my southwest discovery,
Per fretum febris, by these straits to die. Through the raging of fever

I joy that in these straits I see my west;
For though their currents yield return to none,
What shall my west hurt me? As west and east
In all flat maps (and I am one) are one,
So death doth touch the resurrection. Doth: does

Is the Pacific Sea my home? Or are
The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?
Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar,
All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them,
Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Sam.

We think that Paradise and Calvary,
Christ’s cross and Adam’s tree, stood in one place;
Look lord, and find both Adams met in me;
As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam’s blood my soul embrace.

So, in his purple wrapped receive me Lord,
By these his thorns give me his other crown;
And as to others’ souls I preached thy word,
Be this my text, my sermon to mine own:
Therefore, that he may raise, the lord throws down.

10- A Comment on “John Donne’s Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness”
Izaak Walton has reasonably dated the composition of this poem at the time of Donne’s last illness, eight days before his death in 1631. Donne has drawn together his profound studies in theology, his interest in the Renaissance world of voyaging, his brilliant sermons, and his lifelong habits of introspective meditation to write a sermon for himself on his deathbed.
The poem starts with a deliberate mode of preparation to inter the holy room- the afterlife of peace. The formal meditation is, indeed, a spiritual exercise to get ready to sing the hymn he believes he will sing after he inters the holy room.
The imagery used in the second stanzas is developed from the ability of Donne to view his own situation from a distance and study his condition in an objective detail. The analogy between the outer world of nature (the macrocosm) and the little world of man (the microcosm) develops an imaginative comparison of the physicians and the cosmographers. The physicians, charting the course of Donne’s disease, have become the geographers of his body. Spread out flat upon his bed, he has become a map on which the doctors are charting forth a “South-west discovery” such as Magellan made. But the “straits” through which this passage will be made are the pains and difficulties of death: Per fretum febris, “through the straits of fever.”
Donne foresees his westward passage. It is a passage toward sundown. However, he finds joy in the prospect, because he knows that a flat map is only an illusory diagram. At the far edge, West becomes East, sundown becomes sunrise. The conclusion is that death will meet resurrection.
Donne’s meditative questioning in the fourth stanza indicates a process of analysis bent upon understanding the goal of his passage, and indeed the very question imply the goal, for the “Pacific Sea,” the “Eastern Riches,” and “Jerusalem” are all symbols of the “Holy room” that Donne is now approaching.
The compressed phrasing in stanza four contains a mine of implications. The traveler to the peaceful ocean, or to the wealth of the Orient, or to that holy city whose name means “Vision of Peace,” may move through the “Straits of Anyan” (supposed by old geographers to separate Asia and America), or the Straits of Magellan, or the Straits of Gibraltar. However, the voyage is full of pain and difficulty. This is true of whatever regions of the earth he may sail from or sail between: “Whether where Japheth dwelt, or Ham, or Shem.” Here the ancient division of the world into the inheritance given to the three sons of Noah is indicated: Europe (Japheth), Africa (Ham), and Asia (Shem). Thus Donne links the present moment to the antiquity to suggest those straits that face every man who seeks his ultimate home.
The argumentation finally leads to the idea that Paradise (Adam’s place of falling) and Calvary (Redemption by the sacrifice of Christ) have both been located in the same region of the earth, the Near East. In the same way, Adam and Christ now meet in the sick man on his bed. The sweat of his fever fulfills the curse laid upon the first Adam (“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”), but the blood of Christ (the second and last of God’s special creations in the form of man) will redeem the dying man’s soul. Donne prays that, as his funeral shroud, he may be wrapped in the blood of Christ, a royal garment of purple, and that thus he may be granted the Crown of Glory in Heaven.
So the poem ends with the repetition of the central paradox: death is the passage to life, West and East are one, flatness leads to rising: “Therefore that he may raise, the Lord throws down.”
The closing prayer reminds us that the entire poem has been spoken in the presence of God who is directly addressed (apostrophized) in the opening stanza and the last one. This is the quality practiced in the mystical poetry.
Abdullah Bageri Hamidi
Bageri_hamidi@hotmail.com

Hymn To God, My God, In My Sickness
Since I am coming to that holy room
Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be thy music; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before.

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie
Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown
That this is my southwest discovery,
Per fretum febris, by these straits to die. Through the raging of fever

I joy that in these straits I see my west;
For though their currents yield return to none,
What shall my west hurt me? As west and east
In all flat maps (and I am one) are one,
So death doth touch the resurrection. Doth: does

Is the Pacific Sea my home? Or are
The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?
Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar,
All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them,
Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Sam.

We think that Paradise and Calvary,
Christ’s cross and Adam’s tree, stood in one place;
Look lord, and find both Adams met in me;
As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam’s blood my soul embrace.

So, in his purple wrapped receive me Lord,
By these his thorns give me his other crown;
And as to others’ souls I preached thy word,
Be this my text, my sermon to mine own:
Therefore, that he may raise, the lord throws down.

10- A Comment on “John Donne’s Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness”
Izaak Walton has reasonably dated the composition of this poem at the time of Donne’s last illness, eight days before his death in 1631. Donne has drawn together his profound studies in theology, his interest in the Renaissance world of voyaging, his brilliant sermons, and his lifelong habits of introspective meditation to write a sermon for himself on his deathbed.
The poem starts with a deliberate mode of preparation to inter the holy room- the afterlife of peace. The formal meditation is, indeed, a spiritual exercise to get ready to sing the hymn he believes he will sing after he inters the holy room.
The imagery used in the second stanzas is developed from the ability of Donne to view his own situation from a distance and study his condition in an objective detail. The analogy between the outer world of nature (the macrocosm) and the little world of man (the microcosm) develops an imaginative comparison of the physicians and the cosmographers. The physicians, charting the course of Donne’s disease, have become the geographers of his body. Spread out flat upon his bed, he has become a map on which the doctors are charting forth a “South-west discovery” such as Magellan made. But the “straits” through which this passage will be made are the pains and difficulties of death: Per fretum febris, “through the straits of fever.”
Donne foresees his westward passage. It is a passage toward sundown. However, he finds joy in the prospect, because he knows that a flat map is only an illusory diagram. At the far edge, West becomes East, sundown becomes sunrise. The conclusion is that death will meet resurrection.
Donne’s meditative questioning in the fourth stanza indicates a process of analysis bent upon understanding the goal of his passage, and indeed the very question imply the goal, for the “Pacific Sea,” the “Eastern Riches,” and “Jerusalem” are all symbols of the “Holy room” that Donne is now approaching.
The compressed phrasing in stanza four contains a mine of implications. The traveler to the peaceful ocean, or to the wealth of the Orient, or to that holy city whose name means “Vision of Peace,” may move through the “Straits of Anyan” (supposed by old geographers to separate Asia and America), or the Straits of Magellan, or the Straits of Gibraltar. However, the voyage is full of pain and difficulty. This is true of whatever regions of the earth he may sail from or sail between: “Whether where Japheth dwelt, or Ham, or Shem.” Here the ancient division of the world into the inheritance given to the three sons of Noah is indicated: Europe (Japheth), Africa (Ham), and Asia (Shem). Thus Donne links the present moment to the antiquity to suggest those straits that face every man who seeks his ultimate home.
The argumentation finally leads to the idea that Paradise (Adam’s place of falling) and Calvary (Redemption by the sacrifice of Christ) have both been located in the same region of the earth, the Near East. In the same way, Adam and Christ now meet in the sick man on his bed. The sweat of his fever fulfills the curse laid upon the first Adam (“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”), but the blood of Christ (the second and last of God’s special creations in the form of man) will redeem the dying man’s soul. Donne prays that, as his funeral shroud, he may be wrapped in the blood of Christ, a royal garment of purple, and that thus he may be granted the Crown of Glory in Heaven.
So the poem ends with the repetition of the central paradox: death is the passage to life, West and East are one, flatness leads to rising: “Therefore that he may raise, the Lord throws down.”
The closing prayer reminds us that the entire poem has been spoken in the presence of God who is directly addressed (apostrophized) in the opening stanza and the last one. This is the quality practiced in the mystical poetry.
Abdullah Bageri Hamidi
Bageri_hamidi@hotmail.com

The Eagle He clasps the crag with crooked hands
Close to the sun in lonely lands
Ringed with the azure world he stands

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls
He watches from his mountain walls
And like a thunderbolt he falls Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

COMMENTS
By: Bageri Hamidi
bageri_hamidi@hotmail.com
The two stanzas of the poem exhibit the grandeur and power of an eagle. The rhyme scheme of the two stanzas (aaa bbb) reinforces the rigidity of the structure in which the eagle dwells.
The use of alliteration on the sound /k/ in the words “clasps, crag, crooked, close” is well fitted to the harshness of the overall atmosphere that surrounds the eagle. The grandeur of the eagle is supported by the implication of its mythological origin. Eagle was the bird of Zeus. Zeus was Lord of the sky, the rain-god, who wielded the awful thunderbolt. The sky is implied by a metaphor: “The azure world” is spread out in a ring around the eagle. The metaphor enhances the loneliness of the eagle.
The second stanza reads from the eagle’s vantage point of view. Seen from far above, the waves give the appearance of wrinkles, and as they move, they seem to be snakes. Therefore, the verb “crawls” is properly employed, and it metaphorically identifies the sea with the snakes. The snakes are appropriate preys for the eagles. This concrete image motivates the lightening-like swoop of the eagle downward.
The eagle is also personified. The eagle has hands in the first line. It is referred to by the pronoun “he”. Nevertheless, the personification is completed in the 5th line. The eagle watches from his mountain walls. A wall is a fabric built by men, so it is a human word. The use of “his” is also very important. The animals do not own property. The emphasis on the personification of the eagle puts the eagle in a human context.
Thus, the poem “The Eagle” is a celebration of a lonely power and an independent grandeur. Can one think that the poem shows the release of spirit into a moment of insight in a thinking man?

Seems many of the reviews here touch on death and Ghosts in the poem. Chewing on the text leads me to think Frost is expressing the thoughts of a weary traveller. I picture a soldier reminising after burying a man from a village in the woods. The Sodier or killer is on his way to visit more death - thus promises to keep. Regardless - the poem is wonderful yet dark, mysterious and controversial - just as Frost designed it

This poem is about a man's debating between suicide.
"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep" means that he has promises to fulfill before he can give up, he can't give up yet.

the poem is great.

I often think of this poem when I get up extra early for a court appearance or a business trip. When I stand over the bed and look at my cat and husband cuddled under the feather comforter, I think "the woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep...and miles to go before I sleep."

My temptation to hit the snooze bar and spend 9 more minutes in bed is akin to what the narrator felt. When I was younger, I thought maybe the woods represented suicide. But now that I'm older and have so much to live for--things such as my marriage and career that I worked very hard to get and now strive to maintain and improve--I have a very different interpretation.

If I don't keep my promises (to be a faithful and loving wife, to show up and do well at work), I would loose or at least endanger so much that I love, so even though sometimes I'm tempeted to play hooky, stay in bed with my cat, watch tv and eat bon-bons all day, or to flirt with some cute guy at a happy hour when my husband is out of town, I don't.

The path to success is usually much more difficult than the path to mediocrity, but even the most diligent person is sometimes tempted to slack-off. The narrator in the poem is merely taking a moment to consider the other path that tempts him.

I resent having people TELL me what certain phrases or words mean. They are your opinions, or more likely, someone else's opinions that you have taken as your own. This peom is a beautiful piece in its entirety, or when broken down. I get goose bumps on my neck every time I get to the last stanza. To me, it is a puzzle, that as you the reader grow and change, so do the pieces of that puzzle. I first read this poem in high school many years ago. The first time I read it, I KNEW, I absolutely KNEW that Robert Frost was saying something driectly to me from the grave. At the time, I didn't know what that was exactly, I just knew that no piece of literature had ever effected me as this one had. Now that I am on the slippery side of 30, it has come to mean many things to me. Among those things, that society is not always to be taken at face value, in fact sometimes we must rebel agaist society. That death is not a fearsome demon, but a final resting place for all life. And that simplicity is often if not always the best stress reliever there is. Now these are my opinions only, and I force them on no one. I am one who has loved this peom for many years. To the guy who posted the ridiculously long and boring "analysis" of this peom... lighten up. Half way through your ramblings, I started to wonder if you had ever read the poem yourself, or just other peoples interpretations. Although yes, there are mechanics and layers and machinery in poetry, I don't need someone else to point out where oil is leaking or parts are worn. Enjoy the words, the feeling you get from it, don't try to ruin for others.

This dear and heart wrenching poem was one that I grew up with as a child, and i read it even when I was just five years old. I don't believe that you have to fully understand a poem right away. It's okay to take years doing so. Here is the book that I read:

Louise Untermeyer's The Golden Treasury of Poetry contains this poem and others with quality illustrations by J W Anglund.