John Donne’s seventeenth-century biographer, Izaak Walton, speculated that “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” was written in 1611, prior to Donne’s departure on a diplomatic mission to France. Although Walton offered no concrete evidence in support of his claim, the story has followed the poem ever since. As such, many readers have interpreted the speaker’s address to his lover as Donne’s own address to his wife, Anna. But regardless of whether we equate Donne with his speaker, what’s most important is what the poem itself has to say, and particularly about the pain of separation. Donne’s title refers to the poem as a valediction, which is an act of bidding someone farewell. And indeed, the speaker is saying goodbye to his lover before setting out on a journey of unspecified distance and duration. His main goal in the poem is consolatory—that is, he wishes to console his lover, and perhaps himself as well. In the face of the dread that accompanies separation, the speaker rejects the idea that truly refined forms of love depend on physical intimacy. Instead of what he calls “dull sublunary lovers’ love” (line 13), the speaker invokes a spiritually unified form of love that persists across distances.

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