A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

An effective way to think about meter in a poem is to consider its “measure.” This means that any poem in which the line length can be measured by counting syllables, stresses, or both, is metrical. The four basic meters in English poetry are iambic (a single foot is an iamb), trochaic (a single foot is a trochee), anapestic (a single foot is an anapest), and dactylic (a single foot is a dactyl). A line four feet long in iambic meter is called iambic tetrameter. John Donne’s poem, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” is written predominantly in iambic tetrameter, meaning each line contains four iambic feet. Following iambic pentameter, this meter is the most common meter in English language poetry.

Consider the following scan of a few lines from the poem’s first stanza to illustrate the ways meter and syllabic stresses are functioning in the poem:

And WHISper TO their SOULS to GO,      iambic tetrameter 

Whilst SOME of THEIR sad FRIENDS do SAY iambic tetrameter

The BREATH goes NOW, and SOME say, NO iambic tetrameter

The concluding two lines of the poem also perform this metrical work:

Thy FIRMness MAKES my CIRcle JUST, iambic tetrameter

And MAKES me END where I beGUN.