I've never really considered myself to be much for poetry. I enjoy a well written verse, and in a very real way, there is a part of me that deeply envies an artist's ability to put words so eloquently and beautifully to the cries of his or her heart. But I get embarrassed for characters in movies or tv shows when a man reads a hokey poem to the woman he loves and she subsequently melts, as I can only picture myself in her shoes trying everything in my power not to laugh. Nevertheless, my graduate education may be paying off in ways that I was not anticipating. This quarter I'm in an Old Testament Writings class and have fallen in love with the poetic writings of the Old Testament. Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes...I can't get enough. And through this (arguably much needed) expansion of my mind, I've been inspired to give other
poetry of sorts another, more open-minded chance
(reading-NOT writing). Though the poem I've copied below has little if anything to do with the current circumstances of my life, I vividly remember the day in high school that we read this poem in class. That was, truly, the first moment that I really appreciated the power of the written word on an entirely new level. I remember going home, reading and rereading, copying this poem down into a journal, for no real reason other than that I was in awe of the beauty and life of those words. In a way I'm not sure I even yet understand, the steady, passionate, confidence of John Donne's words tug at my heart strings even more now than then. I'm copying this, my favorite poem, below for no other reason than that I find it beautiful.
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.
Source:
Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I.
E. K. Chambers, ed.
London, Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 51-52.
