Untainted Love, A Reading of John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” In “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” John Donne uses many metaphors and images to convince his lover that even though they are going to be apart, their love will remain untainted. The prefix un- meaning to do the opposite of or is also used to reverse the meaning of a word. The definition of tainted is to be contaminated or to be touched or affected slightly with something bad. In short, untainted means to remain the same without being corrupted by outside influences. The author uses references to spheres and circles, which depict something that ends where it begins, to support his defense. Donne also uses many references to nature, as he does in many of his poems, which has the same reinforcing effect. Some examples of the author doing this would be when he refers to the moving of the earth, and the trepidation of the spheres (9-11). The trepidation of the spheres are believed to be like earthquakes and caused by the planets moving. These movements supposedly occurred without being felt by people on earth. Some of the Bentley 2author’s parallels are more far-fetched than others, but all in all his choices in diction provide hard hitting and touching prose. In the first quatrain Donne provides a parallel between a positive way to view death and a positive way to separate from a lover. He states that, like a dying man, he will be leaving in the physical sense, but will still remain in spirit. In the second quatrain Donne writes, “So let us melt, and make no noise, /No tear-floods, nor-sigh-tempests move,” (5-6). The word “melt” was chosen by the author to represent a gradual change in physical state, going form a solid to a liquid, which symbolizes their being separat...
