Valenzuela 1

Jocelyn Valenzuela
Mr. Hedgepeth
AP English Block 6
10 October 2015
Love is the concept that all humans hold dear; it is a muse, a compass, and a divine
unification. To Francesco Petrarch in Sonnet 292 love is an attachment of the bodies of two
lovers, while to John Donne as displayed in A Valediction Forbidding Mourning love is the
celestial synthesis of souls.
Sonnet 292 is an elegy devoted to a love that has been removed by Death. Without her, it
is as if an inspiration is lost, Petrarch croons, Here let my loving song come to a close; / the vein
of my accustomed art is dry, / and this, my lyre, turned at last to tears, (Lines 12-14). His love is
therefore gone, for the waving hair of unmixed gold that shone, / the smile that flashed with the
angelic rays / that used to make this earth a paradise, / are now a little dust, all feeling gone;
(Lines 5-8). The personification of a womans physical traits emphasizes love towards the
physical aspects in a relationshipthe gold symbolizing her value, with nothing but dust to
remain after her demise.
Gold is also used for symbolism in A Valediction Forbidding Mourning in lines 21-24,
which state, 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. Gold is used here to show that true
love, like gold, is valuable, pliable, yet enduring. There are no impediments between; rather than
having a love broken apart by distance, love expands as the distance does.

Valenzuela 2
This love described by Donne, is a love beyond physicalityto him, true love is beyond
lament; it is inseparable even by death. His valediction states, Dull sublunary lovers love /
Whose soul is sensecannot admit / Of absence, cause it doth remove / The thing which
elemented it, (Lines 13-16). Love based on eyes, lips, and hands to miss, (20) leads to a love
whose fate is impeded by their mortality, therefore for love to be true, it must be based on the
enduring binding of two souls into one. His conceit portrays two lovers as one, such as the legs
of a compass unite to complete a circle, for ..when the other far doth roam, / It leans, and
hearkens after it, / And grows erect, as that comes home, (Lines. 30-31)
Sonnet 292s vulta introduces Petrarchs vision of living beyond the passing of a lover, to
contrast with Donnes organizational metaphor and yet I live, grief and disdain to me, / left
where the light I cherished never shows, in fragile bark on the tempestuous sea. (Lines 9-11).
Because of concrete attachment, such loves result in darkness and a sense of displacement; in
such a situation, the tempestuous seas are no longer calmed by lovers consolations, for they
have been taken by Death, and no longer remain in the physical universe as a hand to hold. Thus
being so, Donnes choice after death is to let us melt, and make no noise, / No tear-floods, nor
sigh-tempests move, (Lines 5-6). The usage of kennings are used to metonymize the
consequences of love on the concrete levelhis love is tied by a higher power to form his
compass, in which Thy firmness makes my circle just, and makes me end where I begun,
(Lines 34-35).
To conclude, Donne has an ideal view towards love, in which true love is so far beyond
earthly desires, it is immortal, whereas Petrarch is more realistic, in which it includes the
physical aspect of human lovethe desire for an embodiment of passion, consolation, and an
afflatus.