The more closely I read the poem, the more I see the apparently abrupt topic shifts in stanzas are actually being subtly foreshadowed in previous stanzas. The second stanza, using the image of grief for death from the first stanza says: "No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move".
Floods and tempests are natural disasters, as are earthquakes, referenced in the third stanza beginning: "Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears". The third then progresses to planetary movement, and the fourth stanza holds the idea of planets in the phrase "sublunary lovers". The fourth stanza ends: "Those things which elemented it."
The reference to elements invokes the idea of elemental metals, i.e. silver and gold, in which the chemistry of Donne's day was most keenly focused. The fifth stanza carries on the idea of elemental metal with, "But we by a love so much refined", a thought that the sixth stanza ends with, "Like gold to airy thinness beat." But the word "expansion" just before that line has also recalled the expansion of the heavens, the movement of the planets, a movement traced by compasses, leading to the poem's final image.
Donne specializes in these kind of connections. His poem 'The Crosse' uses the word 'cross' in all of its possible senses - across, crossroads, contradiction (don't cross me), etc. In my favourite of the Holy Sonnets, numbers 16, he uses the word "will" in its multiple senses. The key to Donne's poetry is remembering how elastic the English language is.
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