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From: will.dockery@gmail.com (W.Dockery)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems,alt.arts.poetry.comments
Subject: Re: PPB: Ritual Memory / Will Dockery
Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2024 14:04:29 +0000
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Terry Stomp wrote:

> On Sunday, December 19, 2021 at 4:00:58 PM UTC-5, Will Dockery wrote:
> On Saturday, November 20, 2021 at 2:20:32 PM UTC-5, George J. Dance
> wrote:
>
> Today's poem on Penny's Poetry Blog: Ritual Memory, by Will Dockery If
> these words of love fell into bad timing put them away like a flower in
> a book. [...]
> https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2021/11/ritual-memory-will-dockery.html
> George, my friend Pamela said that the poem reminds her of John Donne.
> https://poets.org/poem/valediction-forbidding-mourning Any thoughts on
> this?
>
> Quite interesting, worth of a stand alone at that:
>
> A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
>
> 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;
> 'Twere 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 greater far, is innocent.
>
> Dull sublunary 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 our selves know not what it is,
> Inter-assured 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 center sit,
>    Yet when the other far doth 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.
>
> --John Donne

Interesting comparison, thanks.

😏