My Favourite Poem - Colleen Hawkins

Colleen Hawkins nominates A Valediction Forbidding Mourning by John Donne.

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/mourning.php

Both Sylvia Plath's Morning Song and Philip Larkin's Broadcast were strong contenders for the crown, but - to borrow a term from Mr Green's beloved horseracing - Dr John Donne wins it "on the nod" with A Valediction Forbidding Mourning. This poem never fails to move me and yet one would hardly expect a poem drawing so heavily on terminology and concepts taken from the seemingly rational and unemotional spheres of astronomy, metallurgy and mathematics to be quite so affecting. "Like gold to aery thinness beat" is possibly my all-time favourite line in a poem or song, but then again I also really rate "I was so upset that I cried all the way to the chip shop", so what do I know?