A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning by John Donne - read by poet Arthur L Wood

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, The breath goes now, and some say no, So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods nor sigh-tempests move, To our profanation of our joys, To tell the laity our love. Moving of the earth brings harms and fears, Men reckon what it did and meant, But trepidation of the spheres, though great afar, Is innocent. Dull subliminary lovers' love, Whose soul is sense, cannot admit absence, Because it doth remove those things 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 airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so, As stiff twin compasses are two. Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth if the other do. And though it in the centre sit, Yet when the other fardeth roam, It leans and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, Who must, like the other foot, obliquely run, Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun.