John Donne is the spearhead of the Metaphysical school of poets, famous for their conceitful style. Conceit is a typically Metaphysical trope, operative as a distant and far-fetched comparison between two radically unlike objects with a stress on wit and intellectual appeal. It is often defined as a violent yoking of heterogeneous elements or ideas. It is device of condensation in Metaphysical verse.
In Valediction: A Forbidding Mourning, the conceit involves a comparison between the twin spirits of the lovers and the two legs of the compass. One remains stagnant in its central position while the other rotates around it in a pursuit of love, as it were. This odd and rather peculiar comparison is operative at the level of sarcasm and undercuts the cliched romantic imagery regarding Platonic lovers.
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