earth in concentric cirlcles annd that the universe was attached to spheres of crystal that often moved or shook. So in the third quatrain when Donne compares the fears and harms of earthquakes to the “trepidation of the spheres” as being innocent, he is contrasting the the love of ordinary people which is not divine and subject to decay, to the love of him and his lady which is divine. So when disturbances happen between their love, if he leaves, it will be like the far-off trembling of in the heavens and will be “innocent” and have no major bearin on their relationship.(Damrosch 238-239)Donne continues to refer to the Ptolemaic universe in the fourth and fifth stanzas. In the fourth stanza, ordinary earth-bound lovers are caught up in the physical presence of the other person, which like all material things in this “sublunary” sphere below the moon, is subject to change and decay (line 13). Their “soul is sense” and “cannot admit absense” (lines 14-15) because the only way to express their love is through their five senses. Their relationship is not mature and depends on the physical act of love, which cannot occur in the absense of each other. Donnne explains that the refined and mature love between he and his love doesn’t need the presence of the physical body because it is “Inter-assured of the mind” and “care lesse, eyse, lips and hands to misse “(line 19). He is saying that he and his wife are connected at the soul and are therefore never really going to be separated even though their phsycial precense will be apart from each other. In the sixth stanza, Donne compares love to gold. Pure gold can be beaten into a layer of the thinnest gold leaf that stretches incredibly far without breaking. The speaker explains here that since the love between he and his wife is pure and precious like gold, it can also be expanded and stretched without a &...
