"And though it in the center sit, / Yet when the other far doth roam, / It leans, and hearkens after it, / And grows erect, as that comes home" ("A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," 29-32).
Donne's poem presents images of both death and journeying. It seems to me like the speaker is using figurative images of death to compare them to his journey in which he will depart from his love -- in other words, I don't think he's going to die soon.
The initial stanza is a simile -- "as virtuous men pass mildly away" (1) -- to introduce a figurative image of death. The title also presents a picture of mourning, public grief over someone's death. However, details in the poem suggest to me that the speaker is not pondering his impending death.
The "priests," or the true lovers in the poem, engage in "refined" love that is "inter-assured of the mind" (17-20), and when they depart, their souls behave in a special way. Their souls endure an "expansion," hearkening after each other, and even if they are two different souls, they are like "compasses" because they spin in the same direction (25-28). Then, there are implications of those lovers reuniting -- "as that comes home" (32) and "makes me end where I begun" (36).
I suppose they could be reuniting in the afterlife, but the images of a journey -- the compass and the longing for company -- seem to be predominant.
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