Valediction
John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” is a poem written about a man who is explaining to his wife the state of their love and how it will be as he is preparing for a journey. The title illustrates a farewell to the speaker’s wife forbidding her to be unhappy and mournful at his depart. Donne compares the leaving to death of a man, but not as unfavorable because his absence is only temporary: “As virtuous men pass mildly away / and whisper to their souls to go... / Twere profanation of our joys / To tell the laity of our love” (1-8). The saying “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” parallels Donne’s words closely. The title of the poem uses the word mourning, suggesting that his leaving could cause similar actions that accompany death and grief. Perhaps the speaker does not want to see his wife mourning his leave of absence, because it will make his departure harder for both of them: “No tear-floods or sigh-tempest move” (6). The mere sight of his wife’s tears and the heartbreaking sound of her sigh could hinder his departure. Donne speaks of how earthquakes are very destructive, but their time apart will be a constructive activity that will inevitably strengthen their relationship. In addition to earthquakes, Donne also compares their feelings to the movement of the planets, in that they will know it is taking place: “But trepidation of spheres / Though greater for, is innocent” (11-12). Donne depicts the strengthening of the couple’s love by comparing it to someone hammering out gold. Their love may be stretched thin but it remains connected: “Not a breach, but an expansion / Like gold to airy thinness beat” (22-24). Near the end of the poem, Donne indicates that the couple’s love resembles a mathematical
In “Whoever We Are, Loss Finds us and Defines Us”, by Anna Quindlen, she brings forth the discussion grief's grip on the lives of the living. Wounds of death can heal with the passing of time, but in this instance, the hurt lives on. Published in New York, New York on June 5, 1994, this is one of many Quindlen published in the New York Times, centered on death's aftermath. This article, written in response to the death of Quindlen’s sister-in-law, and is focused on an audience who has, currently is, or will experience death. Quindlen-a columnist for the New York Times and Newsweek, Pulitzer Prize winner and author-has written six bestselling novels (Every Last One, Rise and Shine, Object Lessons, One True Thing, and Black and Blue) and has been published in the New York Times and Newsweek.
The sympathy of loss is persuaded as a devastating way on how a person is in a state of mind of losing. A person deals with loss as an impact on life and a way of changing their life at the particular moment. In the book My Losing Season by Pat Conroy he deals with the type of loss every time he plays basketball due to the fact, when something is going right for him life finds a way to make him lose in a matter of being in the way of Pat’s concentration to be successful.
Death is merely being controlled by things like fate, which is the only way he can act. He has no way to move on his own without these other forces. Like with war, death is the result, not the cause: death cannot physically make people fight. This comparison devalues death in its importance and therefore its necessity. John Donne’s use of metaphors and personifications in his poem emphasizes his belief that death is not as bad as people think it really is, but can actually be advantageous.
Vicki Harrison once graciously described the grief that loss fathoms in few short words. Grief she says is, “like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim” (A Quote by Vicki Harrison). As I process these captivating words, I am reminded of writer Elizabeth Bishop in her work notably known as, “One Art”. In "One Art", Bishop writes of loss in such an apathetic and absent tone. It is quite evident that perhaps she as Harrison described after experiencing grief in high and low tides, has learned how to swim, and how to live with the pain. This numbness is prevalent in her writing and explanatory of the tones and moods Bishop has chosen for this
“An empty heart-cup” (4) is not something difficult to picture. Hearts are generally associated with love. This is image is supposed to evoke gloom, now that her lover is gone. This cup represents the heart of the narrator. The narrator is drained of love just like her cup. The narrator had invested her emotions into a man, and with her lover gone, her emotions went with him. Nothing but melancholy is now felt. She has no direction of where she wants to take her life, since she has been through so much. What had been in her heart, has been taken from her, and nothing would satisfy her ache. “He won’t be coming back here any more” (5). Any hope of finding the same feelings the narrator had for her lover have
The death of a loved one can often cause a stillness in time. In his poem “The Vacuum,” Howard Nemerov uses a variety of poetic devices in order to portray a husband’s struggle to cope with his wife’s death. Through the use of symbolism, the speaker is able to portray a common household item, a vacuum, as being a physical reminder of his dead wife. The speaker, a widower, also personifies the vacuum and his heart in order to express his sorrow. The poem uses symbolism and personification in order to show how death seems to stop the passage of time.
Loss. Grief. Mourning. Anger. Disbelief. Emotions are in abundance when a loved one passes away. People need to find a way to cope with the situations and often need to express themselves by writing their feelings down in order to get them out. This is exactly what Paul Monette does in his book of poetry title “Love Alone” in remembrance of his companion Rog. Through writing his poetry Monette describes his emotions and the events that occurred during Rog’s battle with AIDS. By Monette’s transitioning through different emotions, the reader begins to understand the pain the author is dealt. Touching upon Kubler-Ross’ five stages of death including denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, Monette transitions to Rog’s decline in health. Using different fonts and no punctuation, the lines are interpreted by the reader using instincts to know when to begin and end a sentence. Evident in the poems “The Very Same”, “The Half-life”, and “Current Status”, Monette gives a description of loss that makes the reader tingle.
The interpretations of what comes after death may vary greatly across literature, but one component remains constant: there will always be movement. In her collection Native Guard, Natasha Trethewey discusses the significance, permanence and meaning of death often. The topic is intimate and personal in her life, and inescapable in the general human experience. Part I of Native Guard hosts many of the most personal poems in the collection, and those very closely related to the death of Trethewey’s mother, and the exit of her mother’s presence from her life. In “Graveyard Blues”, Trethewey examines the definition of “home” as a place of lament, in contrast to the comforting meaning in the epitaph beginning Part I, and the significance
... be casting stones, or holding a conversation. The speaker of the poem does not move on from this emotional torment, yet I do feel as if in his quest for closure he does resolve some of the tumultuous feelings he does have in regard to losing his love.
He compares his relationship with his love as “stiff twin compasses” and other similar comparisons to describe their unity (Dunne 26). Like a compass, they always seem to be working cohesively as one unit. It could have the same theme as “The Passionate Shephard to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe, the theme of love conquering all. They both seem to have an idealistic view to the relationship as well, as the shephard in Marlowe’s poem insists that his love “will all the pleasures prove” if she were to go with him (Marlowe 2). Both poems aim for a perfect life with their love, and Donne’s poem manages to come up with a more realistic option out of the
Anger can be an anchor, allowing momentary structure to the nothingness of loss. The anger becomes a bridge, a connection to the deceased loved one. This connection made from anger feels better than nothing. According to Kübler-Ross, "When the first stage of denial cannot be maintained any longer, it is replaced by feelings of anger, rage, envy, and resentment'" (43). Anger can be seen subtly throughout Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “In Memoriam A. H. H.” For example, Canto 83 portrays the culminating anger that the speaker is battling over the loss of his friend. The speaker writes, “For this alone on Death I wreak / The wrath that garners in my heart; / He put our lives so far apart / We cannot hear each other speak” (1525- 1528). Within these lines the speaker is conveying his opinion that he has somehow been wronged by the death of his friend. He wants vengeance against death because he can no longer communicate with his dead friend. This anger is anchoring the speaker by allowing him to focus on something other than his grief over the loss of his
In contrast, in the next two lines Donne describes the love he shares with his wife comparing it to moving planets “But trepidation of the spheres”. Using this metaphor he managed to grasp the true meaning of the kind of love they share, a love that is not of the earth like in those lovers who seek physical contact, but a love that is spiritual, heavenly, somewhat “out of this world”, a love close to God. As planets rotate around the Sun they cause great effects on people. We may not notice, hear or see them but they do happen, far away from the eyes of the beholder. And the love that Donne and his wife share is like the movement of the spheres, it is of great importance, silent and not visible to the naked eye, but it is there, in a spiritual form, a connection of souls. We can connect the movement of the spheres to the natural science of mathematics as we did with the previous text. The planets create circles as they rotate around the sun. Circles present perfection and infinity so the space that is created between the Sun and the spheres represents the love that the husband and ...
John Donne will not accept death as the finale, his religious conviction supports in the belief of eternal life proceeding death. Throughout the poem Donne’s main purpose was the personification of death, his use of figurative language gave death humanistic characteristics and made death vulnerable and unintimidating. The structure of three quatrains and a couplet for the poem allowed for easier understanding of the context because the layout and rhyme scheme helped the poem flow and also revealed the tones. The imagery of death described by Donne breaks down death’s pride and bravado, as well as shine an encouraging light past the process of dying, on to the hope of delivery to eternal life. Each element played a significant role in the interpretation of the paradox of the poem, that ultimately death is not the universal destroyer of life.
Toward the end of the poem, Auden begins to use hyperboles to demonstrate how his world feels diminished after the passing of his lover. For instance, when Auden writes, “I thought that love would last for ever,” he is using a hyperbole because at some point we all die so therefore, by logical reason, it is impossible for a love to truly last forever. When Auden later writes, “Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood,” he is expressing how his physical world too may as well be over because he has lost his one true love. In some aspects, he wants nature to heed his grief; “He wants the world to reflect the emptiness within him.” Auden has successfully incorporated the use of hyperboles throughout his poem Funeral Blues to further prove the harsh reality of how it feels for the love of your life to die and to be left with nothing but
Judith Wright’s 1946 poem “The Company of Lovers” makes a juxtaposition of two essential forces of major impact upon human existence, the effects of love and those of death. Within the poem it can be noted that the two stanzas reflect each of the certain themes. The first, a universal description of love and the ambitions two lovers might have, whilst the second a reflection of how quick all may soon be lost through the loneliness of death.