A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning: Key Poetic Devices

Conceit

Conceit is a figure of speech that uses elaborate means to establish a parallel between two dissimilar things. This description sounds very similar to the definition of another common literary figure: extended metaphor. Like a conceit, an extended metaphor works by establishing an association between two unlike things and then developing that association over the course of many lines. However, there is a subtle difference between these two figures. An extended metaphor typically works by comparing things with somewhat reasonable similarities. For example, Seamus Heaney’s poem “Digging” features an extended metaphor that implicitly likens the physical act of digging to the intellectual act of writing. These two activities are obviously different, but they are both examples of a vocation. Conceit, by contrast, tends to compare things that are strikingly—indeed surprisingly—different. “Valediction” contains one of the most famous conceits in all of literature: that in which the speaker likens himself and his lover to two points of a draftsman’s compass. The speaker sustains this conceit throughout the poem’s final three stanzas, ultimately describing how his lover, as “the fixed foot” (line 26), enables him to trace a circle that will “make me end where I begun” (line 36).

Overstatement

Overstatement, which is also known by the term hyperbole (hi-PER-buh-lee), refers to examples of extravagant exaggeration. Poets typically use overstatement for comic effect, and that’s exactly what Donne does in his poem’s opening stanzas (lines 1–8):

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, 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.

Overstatement takes several forms here. On the broadest level, consider the absurd way the speaker compares his parting from his lover to the death of “virtuous men.” The speaker references the romantic trope in which the parting of lovers is conventionally depicted as a kind of death. Yet the elaborate nature of the comparison has a humorous effect, as do the hyperbolic references to “tear-floods” and “sigh-tempests.” With these terms, which liken emotional responses to natural disasters, Donne gently mocks the exaggerated emotional expressions commonly found, for example, in Petrarch’s love sonnets. But perhaps most amusing of all is the fact that the speaker only implicitly acknowledges the pain of parting. His main goal is just to keep his departure as drama-free as possible, which he indicates in the second stanza. There, he again overstates the case, suggesting that any drama will alert “the laity” (i.e., the common folk) to their relationship and thereby mark a “profanation” (i.e., a desecration) of their love.

Simile

A simile (SIH-muh-lee) is a figure of speech that explicitly compares two unlike things to each other, usually using the words “like” or “as.” The speaker makes several dazzling comparisons throughout “Valediction.” In fact, the poem begins with a sustained simile that the speaker announces in the opening line: “As virtuous men pass mildly away.” The next three lines continue to develop the first part of the simile, which relates to “virtuous men” whose virtue lies in their capacity to die without struggle. The second—and more relevant—half of the simile comes in the second stanza (lines 5–6):

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move

Essentially, the speaker aims to ensure a drama-free parting by modeling his departure on the passing of those “virtuous men” who depart from life with neither struggle nor cry. Other similes in the poem aren’t as sustained, but they’re equally bold. For instance, the speaker invites his lover to think of the physical distance between them less as a “breach” and more as an “expansion, / Like gold to airy thinness beat” (lines 23–24). The speaker also uses a simile to introduce his famous compass conceit: “If [our souls] be two, they are two so / As stiff twin compasses are two” (lines 25–26).

Paradox

In literary analysis, the term paradox refers to a statement that appears contradictory but can be interpreted in a way that makes logical sense. A familiar type of paradox is known as an oxymoron, which refers specifically to statements that link two apparently contradictory terms, like “pretty ugly” or “crash landing.” The chief feature of oxymoron is its compression. By contrast, instances of paradox are more developed and sustained. In Donne’s poem, the speaker introduces a paradox in the sixth stanza (lines 21–24):

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.

Immediately after introducing the paradoxical unity of separate souls, the speaker invites his lover to think of their separation not as a spatial “breach” but as a spiritual “expansion” of their love. This reframing of a breach (separated) that’s also an expansion (continuous) is also paradoxical. This paradox them leads into the last section of the poem, where the speaker develops the notion of expansion in a new way that gives the paradoxical idea of two-souls-in-one a more concrete form. In the final three stanzas, the speaker introduces the conceit in which he and his lover are “twin compasses” (line 26). Even though separate from one another, they are, according to this conceit, always connected—two distinct parts of the same metaphysical tool.

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