An examination of Isaiah 40 as possible intertext to John Donne's “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” illuminates the consolatio motifs of the poem. Isaiah 40's imagery may have influenced Donne's metaphysical conceits of compass, circle, and “gold to airy thinness beat,” underlining the spiritual link between the holy lovers. In addition, the binary discursive mode that expresses the thematics of Isaiah 40 invites further exploration of the influence of Old Testament poetry, in general, upon the metaphysical conceit as literary praxis.
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