-A VALEDICTION OF WEEPING-

A Valediction: of Weeping begins with a scene of two lovers parting:

Let me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth

The poet is asking for his lovers indulgence. If he cries now, while hes still with her, her face will be reflected in his tears,
transforming them from ordinary waste into objects of valuecoins. The poet isnt asking for a physical connection here; he
doesnt say embrace me before I go. Instead he seeks to reflect and be reflected by the beloved, at once emphasizing their
connection and the fact that they are alreadyeven now before his departureundeniably separate. This dynamic might be similar
to the one we enter into while reading Donnes poem. On the one hand, the clever figures and rhyme scheme remind us that the
poem is an artificial construct of symbols and sounds. But at the same time, the poems dramatic situation encourages us to identify
with the speakers authentic human grief. Lets look at the entire first stanza:

Let me pour forth

My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth,
For thus they be
Pregnant of thee;
Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more,
When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore,
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.

The financial metaphor of lines 3 and 4 suggests that theres a transaction involved here, and we see already an example of the kind
of hall-of-mirrors paradox Donne so relished, and will soon use again, in this very poem. Perhaps the speaker is departing to earn
actual coins to support the beloved. If so, that would be a gesture of unification and shared purpose, but at the same time one
ironically requiring separation. In order to be with you, Donne seems to imply, I must leave you.
In line 7 Donne suggests that his tears are both fruits of his present grief at parting and emblems of his future grief, when he will
be away. (Of course, this grief might also be understood not as the grief of parting from the beloved, but as the grief of having to
undertake the journey in the first place.) So the tears are literal and metaphorical, physical and symbolic, at the same time.
Similarly, the poem as a whole can be seen both as a sincere expression of grief and as an emblema representation, that isof
grief.
The next two lines feature a tricky metaphor for the speakers future sorrow:
When a tear falls, that thou falls which it bore,
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.
As his own tear falls, his beloveds reflection falls with it. He and she both become nothing; her reflection falls and thus vanishes,
and he, like his tear, departs. If he is departing on a sea voyageas divers shore might suggestthen we may add another
dimension to this already crowded conceit. Both tears and the sea are salty water, and here tears figuratively signify the impending
separation, just as the sea will literally enforce it. Keeping in mind that a fall in a relationship can refer to unfaithfulness, this line
could even be read as a premonition of adultery: the tears provoked by my sorrow at leaving you fall, just as you will fall into unfaithfulness
when Im gone. Following this line of thinking, So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore turns to pure
bitterness: when were apart, were nothing to each other.
So while we could read this first stanza as the heartfelt cry of a lover in anguish, devastated to be separated from his beloved, its
also possible to take these lines as the cynical complaint of a husband who feels persecuted in his role as breadwinner and, even
worse, unsure of his wifes fidelity. Which of these is the correct reading? Its a natural question to ask, but also a misleading one,
because the great pleasure in reading Donne lies in just this kind of ambiguity. His poems are incredibly detailed, specific, and
intricate, but at the same time mysterious, vague, and elusive. Here again, were led to consider the ways in which the poem both
invites us to identify with the speakers emotions, and reminds us that what were looking at here is not a person but a poem. Well
see this dynamic continue throughout the rest of the poem, as Donne oscillates between the tangible and the conceptual, the literal
and the metaphorical. By the time we get to the final lines, it may even seem that the poem is more concerned with the gap between
reality and imagination than it is with its ostensible subject of two lovers parting.
The next stanza introduces a new metaphor that is relatedappropriately, given the occasion of the poemto the idea of travel.

On a round ball
A workman that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,
And quickly make that, which was nothing, all,
 So doth each tear,
Which thee doth wear,
A globe, yea world by that impression grow,
Till thy tears mixed with mine do overflow
This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so.

This stanzas transformation of a nothing into an all is similar to an idea expressed near the end of another Donne poem, The
Canonization. Both poems use the figure of a world contained in a reflection, and in each case great stress is put on the metaphysical
nature of that containment: the physical object is captured in a reflection, but so is the objects essence. In The Canonization it
isnt just the world that is contained in the glasses of your eyes, but the whole worlds soul. The distinction is important.
Donne is alluding to the Christian theory of transubstantiation, where the base physical representations of bread and wine are
transformed, by the intercession of the Holy Ghost, into holy reality: the body and blood of Christ. Analogous processes occur in A
Valediction: of Weeping. Much as the tears in line 7 were shown to be both physical fruits and metaphysical emblems, here
Donne conflates reality (the world in which we actually live) and representation (the globe we use as an icon of that world). A
blank ball is nothing until its overlaid with maps to become an all. A tear is nothing until it reflects the face of the beloved and
becomes an all. And perhaps the poem itself is both a nothinga mere collection of sounds and symbolsand yet also an all, a
container for the poets genuine emotions.
The final lines of the second stanza may contain the most knotty ideas in a very knotty poem:
Till thy tears mixed with mine do overflow
This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so.
How are we to understand the phrase This world here? There are several possible readings, and as elsewhere in the poem, they
range from the simple and concrete to the complex and abstract. This world could be the real world the lovers see around them: If
we both cry, our eyes will fill with tears, and we literally wont be able to see each other anymore. But of course the figure also works as a
metaphor for the characters emotional states: Our mutual sorrow at parting destroys the heaven-on-earth we make when were
together. Finally, keep in mind the maps Donne showed us earlier in the stanza. The speakers tears might also be obscuring his
vision of that globe, a little world made cunningly that in turn represents the literal earth. Again Donne succeeds in mixing the
real and the figurative.
Mixed might not refer to a literal mixing of the two lovers tears, but instead to the process of reproductionthe oscillation of
reality and representationthat is gradually manifesting itself as the poems central concern. The two lines might suggest that
watery reflections of the lovers are being created and destroyed endlessly: in reflecting, or mixing with, each others tears, the lovers
overflow and destroy those reflections, the faces-within-tears from the first stanza. We see the lovers (real) tears as images within
images, endlessly generative and endlessly in decay.
Immediately following his sequence of globe and water imagery, Donne compares his beloved to the moon, the sphere that controls
the flow of tides.
O more than moon,
Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere,
Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear
To teach the sea, what it may do too soon;
Let not the wind
Example find,
To do me more harm, than it purposeth;
Since thou and I sigh one anothers breath,
Whoeer sighs most, is cruelest, and hastes the others death.

The beloved is more than the moon: not only can she can draw tears from herself, but she can pull those tears all the way up into
her own sphere, or presence, where the poet is as well. Donne exhorts her not to use her power to draw up seas, that is, to
weep, because it could drown him in at least three ways. His reflection would be drowned when caught in her tears; seeing her cry
would figuratively drown him in sorrow; and if her tears inadvertently teach the sea and give an example to the wind, he might
literally be drowned when he sets sail on his voyage.
The poems closing breath metaphor, which appropriately follows the wind image, once again asserts the union of the
lovers: Because we breathe as one when were together, our sighs of sorrow use up each others breath, and so hasten each others death. As
we might have expected, Donne ends the poem with a paradox. We tend to associate breath with life, but here an excess of breath
leads to death. This metaphor, like the earlier tear/reflection conceit, warns the beloved that her physical expressions of grief
crying, sighingcause emotional harm. When she cries she drowns his reflection in her tears; when she sighs she steals his life-
breath. Once again, the metaphorical and the real appear to be so closely aligned as to become indistinguishable.