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.
Donne opens with a deathbed scene so quiet that bystanders can't agree when the final breath occurs. This peaceful departure becomes his model for how the lovers should part: without dramatics, without "tear-floods" or "sigh-tempests." He argues their love is too sacred—too refined—to parade before "the laity," those ordinary souls who wouldn't understand. The analogy is daring: their separation should resemble death's most serene moment, suggesting a love that transcends physical presence.
The middle stanzas build Donne's case through contrasts. Earthquakes terrify people because they're violent and visible, while the far greater movements of celestial spheres go unnoticed and cause no harm. Similarly, "dull sublunary lovers"—those whose love depends entirely on physical presence—fall apart when separated, because their connection exists only in the realm of sense and body. Donne distinguishes his love as something "so much refined" that it exists primarily in the mind, a union that doesn't require constant physical proximity to remain intact. He's not dismissing the body, but insisting that true love contains something beyond it.
The famous compass metaphor arrives as proof of concept. If their souls are separate, they function like the two legs of a compass: one remains fixed at the center while the other travels in wide arcs. The fixed foot (the beloved staying behind) appears motionless but actually leans toward the moving foot, participating in every rotation. When the moving foot returns home, the fixed foot "grows erect," completing the circle. Donne's final claim is bold: the beloved's constancy—her staying firmly in place—is what allows his travels to form a perfect circle, to "end where I begun." The metaphor suggests that true separation is impossible for such lovers; they remain connected through an invisible geometry of devotion, each movement of one affecting the other regardless of distance. Absence becomes not a breach but an expansion, their bond stretched thin as gold leaf yet unbroken.
Interpretation generated with assistance from Claude.