{
 "id": "john-donne/a-valediction-forbidding-mourning",
 "title": "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "John Donne",
 "poet_slug": "john-donne",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poems, by J. D. with Elegies on the Authors Death",
 "book_slug": "poems-1633",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": "Songs and Sonnets",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1633,
  "venue": "Poems, by J. D. with Elegies on the Authors Death (1633)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/donnepoems"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/john-donne_poetry",
  "file": "songs-and-sonnets.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofjohndonne01donn_1",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemswithelegie00chamgoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemswithelegie01chamgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 36,
  "n_stanzas": 9,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 43,
  "max_indent": 1
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "As virtuous men pass mildly away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And whisper to their souls to go,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Whilst some of their sad friends do say,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Now his breath goes,” and some say, “No.”",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "So let us melt, and make no noise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "’Twere profanation of our joys",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To tell the laity our love.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Men reckon what it did, and meant;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "But trepidation of the spheres,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though greater far, is innocent.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Dull sublunary lovers’ love",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "—Whose soul is sense⁠—cannot admit",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Of absence, ’cause it doth remove",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The thing which elemented it.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But we by a love so far refined,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That ourselves know not what it is,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Inter-assured of the mind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Care less eyes, lips and hands to miss.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Our two souls therefore, which are one,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though I must go, endure not yet",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "A breach, but an expansion,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like gold to airy thinness beat.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "If they be two, they are two so",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As stiff twin compasses are two;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To move, but doth, if th’ other do.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And though it in the centre sit,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet, when the other far doth roam,",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "It leans, and hearkens after it,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And grows erect, as that comes home.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Such wilt thou be to me, who must,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;",
    "indent": 1
   },
   {
    "text": "Thy firmness makes my circle just,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And makes me end where I begun.",
    "indent": 1
   }
  ]
 ]
}