Our two souls, therefore, which are one, …. Like gold to airy thinness beat.

Answer: These lines have been taken from Donne’s love-lyric, ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.’ By means of a Metaphysical conceit, the poet here reflects on the nature of true love which remains unchanged even after physical separation.

While taking leave of his beloved wife to go abroad, the poet says that love has fused their two souls into one, the soul of his beloved wife and that of himself. Therefore, even if he goes away their souls would not be separated. He tells his beloved that his going away from her does not mean any breach of love, rather it is an expansion of it. Referring to the beating of gold into a leaf, he further says, just as gold when it is beaten, does not break into pieces, but spreads out, grows airy thin, and covers a much larger area. Similarly, their separation from each other does not mean a break in their love. It makes their love more spiritual, refined, and ethereal.

Gold is the most precious of metals, and, therefore, fit, to represent the poet’s most precious love. The conceit of the gold beaten to thinness appears to be very strange and far-fetched but it bears the mark of the poet’s intellect. To prove holy love which is not affected by movement or change of place, the poet has aptly used this analogy between true love and precious gold.