Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, June 25th, 2025.

And today is a very special day because 14 years ago today, I married my lovely wife, Heather.

However, I am currently not in the same country as her.

And because of some of the vocational choices that I've made and the summer travel that I sometimes

do, we have ended up apart for several anniversaries in that 14 years. Thankfully, she's also my long-suffering wife, Heather.

And before you begin to worry about marital strife,

she is very gracious, and we have found opportunities to celebrate before my departure

and will celebrate more when I return.

In the meantime, I have selected today's poem to mark the occasion.

It's one of my favorites. We featured it on the Daily Poem before.

It's John Dunn's A Validiction Forbidding Morning for my wife on our anniversary.

Here's the poem.

As virtuous men pass mildly away and whisper to their souls to go, whilst some of their sad

friends do say the breath goes now, and some say, no.

So let us melt and make no noise, no tear floods, nor sigh tempests move, to a profanation of our joys to tell

the laity our love. Moving of the earth brings harms and fears men reckon what it did and meant,

but trepidation of the spheres, though greater far, is innocent. Dull sublunary lovers love, whose soul is sense, cannot admit absence,

because it doth remove those things which elemented it.

But we, by a love, so much refined, that ourselves know not what it is,

interassured of the mind, careless eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls, therefore, which are one, though I must go, endure not yet a breach,

...