Both ‘A Valediction’ and ‘The Anniversary’ as two poems written by John Donne possess certain similarities, largely through Donne’s use of extended metaphor in both to portray his feelings of love. However, elements of these poems can also be seen as to greatly juxtapose with ‘A Valediction’ focussing on the concept of ‘greater love’ enduring distance whilst ‘The Anniversary’ seems to portray the same love, though enduring time.
Both poems convey a sense of ‘higher love’ - a highly spiritual experience. In ‘A Valediction’ Donne writes of ‘Dull, sublunary lovers’ in comparison to himself and his wife, using assonance to amplify the portrayal of these lovers as heavy-sounding and truly physical rather than anything more spiritual. The adjective ‘dull’ creates a lack of brightness about most lovers in comparison to Donne, whilst as he adds ‘Whose soul is sense’ Donne uses sibilance to continue the peaceful and gentle air of the poem in order to replicate his love, rather than to portray the love of the ‘Dull, sublunary lovers’. Donne’s ‘refin’d’ love (syntactically placed at the end of the line for further weight in describing the innate majesty of Donne’s love) connotes that of a diamond – a precious commodity in the 17th century – to describe the rich wealth of his love to his wife, but also its rarity, whilst Marxist literary theorists perceive this to be a reference to Donne’s ‘hardly attainable’ love, only truly expressible in the higher classes. In ‘The Anniversary’ , Donne too uses the concept of love described by material things to portray its precious properties.
Donne declares of he and his wife that ‘we’re kings’ announcing their superior love with the regal title, but also how love, in turn, is worth more than any status or money. The pronoun of ‘we’re’ joins Donne and his subject together, suggesting their closeness and the honesty of their love and that ‘none but we’ has such a love, emphasising its rarity and again its precious qualities. The material focus in both of these poems is contrasting to other metaphysical poems such as ‘To His Coy Mistress’ written by Andrew Marvell which is much more greatly concerned with natural imagery to portray his love. Marvell’s ‘vegetable love’ metaphor connotes a love that is precious – like Donne’s – but more natural in its reference to pastoral life rather than riches. Rather than choosing an image of wealth as Donne does, Marvell portrays love through an image of need and nature, creating not only a warmer, more greatly personal image, but also an image of love being required like food rather than love as a frivolity. However, much like ‘The Anniversary’, ‘To his Coy Mistress’ has its structure laid in couplets, to create a sense of cohesion surrounding his ideas – a typical method of the metaphysical poets to express their complex and often scientific extended metaphors with the contrast and aid of a tight structure. Whilst the structure of ‘A Valediction’ differs from couplets with its use of ABAB quatrains, this structure is still used to the same end – to supply an organised vehicle for philosophical meditations on love. However, it can also be interpreted that the longer length of the couplet stanzas in ‘The Anniversary’ in comparison to the shorter quatrains of ‘A Valediction’ is to portray the long length of John Donne’s love expressed in the poem as eternal when compared with the long-distance love of ‘A Valediction’.
Though similarities can be drawn through language and structure choice, the two poems become more greatly juxtaposed when taking into consideration the subject matter; Although both portray enduring love, ‘A Valediction’ is love enduring distance, whilst ‘The Anniversary’ is love enduring time. Donne exclaims that ‘death were no divorce’ using the alliterative heavy ‘d’ sound to create an air of absolute certainty in the statement; a reader believes instantly. The reference to divorce conveys Donne’s subject matter of death not ending love like divorce does, but also implies the spiritual actuality of the 17th century, a society in which divorce was frowned upon, and also a society that believed in afterlife – thus giving opportunity to Donne’s thesis. Donne describes the love growing through ‘Years and years unto years’, syntactically placed at the beginning of the line to strike the reader so that the words carry more truth. The repetition of ‘years’ implies the long period of time that the love will last, whilst ‘unto’ conveys gentle movement, portraying how this endurance is not hard, but comes naturally to the couple. This reference to a long distance of time in love is also found in Marvel’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’, with Marvell professing that he would love ‘An age at least to every part’, with the time reference of an ‘age’ not only implying a phenomenally long distance as Donne does, but more greatly a feeling of history and heroism in his love, with an ‘age’ providing a romantic image, almost connoting a classical epic, portraying the love as timeless though it dies with their death. However, ‘A Valediction’ does not reference the ‘timelessness’ of love at all, it simply dwells on its ability to endure distance., and in fact compares it to death, rather than the afterlife. Donne writes of the dying that ‘whisper to their souls, to go’ using the word whisper for its gentle pronunciation creating a lack of alarm around the morbid subject matter, whilst ‘souls’ again is a spiritual reference, appropriate for the 17th century, and used to portray the purity of the couple’s Christian love. The verb ‘go’ here is euphemistic of death, again to soften the harsh subject matter, but also to reference the ‘going’ of Donne, not into death, but away from his wife.
‘A Valediction’ then introduces Donne’s conceit of the compass – a typical feature of metaphysical poetry – to logically portray the effect of distance. His wife, ‘the fix’d foot’, is interpreted by feminist literary theorists as a microcosm of the submissive place of women in 17th century society and their lack of freedom, but could also be interpreted as Donne’s wife’s stability and continuance as a strength rather than her suppression. Donne implies therefore that although she stays ‘fix’d’ and therefore in a sense of turmoil due to her powerless position, she is always in contact with him like the two feet of a compass. Thus it is that ‘A Valediction’ differs from ‘The Anniversary’ as they are concerned with different obstacles being overcome by love. However, whilst this may be so, they are joined in similarity as two portrayals of different kinds of endurance. This ‘enduring love’ contrasts greatly with other poetry such as E.E Cumming’s ‘let it go – the’ with even just the title implying the temporality of love and having to ‘let it go’. Cummings writes of love as the ‘smashed word broken / open vow’ using his typical, avant-garde lack of capital letters and punctuation with lines running over stanzas (appropriate to the metamorphosis of poetry in the post-war period) to imply his fragility in losing love but also to show the chaotic wreck that love leaves when it ends, and thus that it does not endure. The adjectives Cummings choses here are all violent to portray the hurtful and dramatic way in which love does end and yet Cummings uses similar marital language as in ‘The Anniversary’ although here the ‘vow’ is broken, showing in fact the opposite, that even marital vows are destined to end.
In conclusion, though these two poems do contrast in their focus and to some degree their structure, both poems convey a sense of ‘enduring love’ with a stable form and structure, with both implying the regal, rich qualities of love. In both poems, Donne is truly in love with his subject, and is convincing in his belief that they will last despite obstacles, and whilst other poetry contrasts both his hypothesis of love and his optimism, both of his poems explored here portray his faith in lasting love as a potent force, so that despite minor differences, the reader is left feeling a similar way at the end of both poems – quietly hopeful.