First of all, the parting of two lovers like Donne and his wife is likened to the death of a virtuous man. "As virtous men passe mildly' away,/ And whisper to their soules, to goe,/ Whilst some of their sad friends doe say,/ The breath goes now, and some say, no:".
As a virtuous man dies, he knows that he has reconciled himself to God and will therefore be accepted into heaven. Thus he dies in peace and calm, and the people surrounding him at his deathbed are sad, but not anguished. In the same way, when two virtuous lovers part, there is no pain, because they know that each will be true to the other, even when they are apart. The people surrounding the dying man are quiet partly so as not to disturb him - in the same way, Donne says that too much outward show of emotion on the part of one lover would just disturb the other. Donne is then very disapproving of the love of the rest of the population. The wails and screams and tears that "Sublunary" lovers display when they must part are shown to be simply an act, with no real emotion in it. This conceit is as relevant today as the day it was written. This striking comparison is very thought-provoking and its message is universal and this is a key element of great poetry. A measure of this is that he is still held in high acclaim by critics today!.
The lovers are then likened to planetary bodies. In such a way, Donne places them above the "mortal earth". Unlike natural disasters, which are unpredictable and chaotic, the movement of the planets is regular, peaceful and calm, even though the planets move much further. This conceit is a topical allusion. He chooses to include these allusions to show his high erudition. As with most of Donne's conceits he has compared love or religion to something that seems dissimilar but relevant to the era he was writing in. Throughout time some people have seen Donne's conceits as ridiculous and as Samuel Johnson wrote in the late 1700's; "Donne's conceits are the most heterogeneous ideas yoked by violence together".
