Although the subject matter of A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning could be applied to any couple pending separation, according to Izaak Walton, a seventeenth-century biographer, John Donne wrote his poem for his wife on the eve of his departure for France in 1611 (Damrosch et al. 238). In the poem, the speaker pleads with his lady to accept his departure. The speaker defines and celebrates a love that transcends the physical and can therefore endure and even grow through separation. In arguing against mourning and emotional upheaval, Donne u ....