A Valediction: of Weeping

BY JOHN DONNE

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 diverse shore.

Let me weep in front of you.

My tears are now valuable because they fall for you and hold your image.
They symbolize grief.
When a tear falls from me, you fall from me as well,
So then we are nothing when we are apart

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 mix'd with mine do overflow
This world; by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so.

Like a mapmaker who can make an entire world out of what once was nothing, your tears are worth something greater
and can cover the globe until our tears together flood the world. Your tears ruin my heaven (happiness).

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 another's breath,
Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death.
You are more powerful than the moon at drawing up seas and you drown me. Do not cry and make this worse than it
already is by teaching the sea how to drown me. Do not sigh and teach the wind to shipwreck me. Since we are one
and we breathe the same breath, do not waste our breath in sighs and speed up our death.
So thou and I are nothing then,
when on a
divers shore.

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
Donne gives the woman in the poem great power. Her image makes his tears valuable. Her tears can
create something out of nothing. She is stronger than the moon at pulling seas (or her tears) to drown him
in sorrow. Her weeping can teach the sea to drown him. Her sighing can teach the wind to shipwreck him.
Her sighing can also kill him.
The poet feels that weeping at the time of separation is natural, but it has to be reduced to the minimum
because it will destroy the peace of mind of both of them. (Naeem)
Tone
Sorrowful and pleading
They do not want to leave each other.
The speaker does not want her to cry because it hurts him.
The speaker takes his voyage as a test of his and his lover's love. He is trying to convince her that her
tears only mean that the distance is winning and their love is not.
Theme
Love should be able to withstand anything.
Difficult situations should be approached with patience and understanding.
Words to know:
Mintage: creation of coins
Forbear: to refrain from something
Emblems: symbolic objects (such as a logo)
Divers: (diverse) separate
Setting of Poem
Setting not stated; can be inferred as being indoors, lovers having a tearful goodbye
"so thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore" (Line 9)
Title Analysis:
"A Valediction of Weeping"
Valediction: a farewell/goodbye
Weeping: crying/sorrow

The title reflects how the speaker wishes for his loved one to abstain from crying for the reasons
presented in the piece.
Part 1:
"Valuable Reflection"
Speaker asking his beloved to not cry; tears are valuable when they're caused by someone else
Part 2
Creation of Ocean
The speaker is saying their tears can make up an entire ocean, as fast as the Earth was made.
Part 3
Final Farewell
Speaker is talking about the difficulty to say goodbye to each other
Structure/ General information
The poem contains three stanzas with 9 lines each, following the rhyme scheme ABCADDEEE.

Couplets-2 lines in center of poem add more emphasis due to the difference of structure from rest of poem

This is a more complex rhyme scheme as compared to some of his other works, which may reflect the
serious tone of the poem.
Allusions:
"On a round ball / ... / An Europe, Afric, and an Asia," (Lines 10-12)
Tears are compared to waters (typically the sea):
"So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore." (Line 9)
"...thy tears mix'd with mine do overflow / This world" (Lines 17-18)
"Draw not up seas to drown me in they sphere" (Line 20)
"a workman that hath copies by" line 11 -God creating humans
"and quickly make that, which was nothing, all" line 13
"this world, my waters sent to thee" line 18
-Book of Genesis
Tone:
Donne is trying to calm them both down and be reassuring that their love will hopefully live on.
"Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death" (Line 27)

Mood:
Sorrowful in that neither lover wants to leave the other and Donne is telling his wife not to make the
goodbye more painful by crying excessively.
"Let me pour forth / My tears before thy face,"
(Lines 1-2); shows sorrow.
"Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere;" (Line 20), his attempt at soothing her
Theme:
Overall, Donne conveys that tears should not be wasted when one is not with their lover, and that said
tears only have value when one's lover's face is reflected in them (sorrow has no value unless shared with
someone), just as coins only have value with a mark. Throughout the poem he never asks for physical
connection, again implying the spiritual connection that has been described in his other works.If said tears
fall when they are away from eachother, they are inherently "nothing then, when on a divers shore" (Line
9), and their connection is lost, allowing one to "fall" into another's love

Just as the mapmaker creates a reflection of the Earth,

their tears create reflections of eachother and 'overflow' their world, giving it meaning
just as the maps on the sphere give the sphere meaning.
Through the continuous overlapping of tears, these worlds are evidently created and destroyed, just as
their love continues to develop
in newfound ways as their relationship continues.

The speaker compares his lover to "more than [the] moon" (Line 19), showing that she can siphon his
tears (the sea) which may drown him, whether it be in sorrow
when he's with her
or in depression while he's out at sea, figureatively shipwrecking him
on his journey, just as large waves do. Thus, she shouldn't cry while he is gone for that would "haste the
other's death" (Line 27) and cause him to essentially be forgotten in sadness.
Analysis

The speaker of this poem is a man or a woman saying good-bye to his or her
romantic partner. It cannot always be inferred that the speaker is John Donne, even
though he is the poet; although often he is the speaker. In the first line, he asks his
partner to allow him to \"pour forth his tears\" or cry before her. In saying the next
line, he is using metaphor to say that his tears are like money (coins) in which his
lover\'s face, which reflects in them, is \"stamped\" and therefore her face gives his
tears value, like money. \"For thus they be pregnant of thee\" reinforces the fact
that she is being imprinted/stamped in his tears. He explains that his tears are
\"fruits of much grief\" or results of his saddness, but also more in that since she is
present in his tears, each time a tear falls their relationship falls also, until it is less
and less.
The next stanza shifts gears into another metaphor common in Donne\'s poetry, that
of a map. He explains how a catographer (mapmaker) creates a replica of the entire
world by lying continents on a ball/globe that was originally simply a ball. Donne
goes on to apply this metaphor to his relationship saying that each of his tears,
although small, combined with his lover\'s tears, are enough to overflow the world.
In this line, Dunne uses hyperbole (exaggeration)/overstatement because this cannot
actually happen. The last line of the stanza implies that \"waters sent from thee\" or
her tears, \"dissolve his heaven\" in that the lovers are parting and therefore his
heaven, which was his relationship with her, is being destroyed.
In the next line, Donne mentions the moon, which pulls the current; another
overstatement saying that the water produced from his lover\'s tears will drown him
and, like the moon, pull the current to drown him in as well. He asks her not to kill
him with her tears/sadness and to decline from \"teaching the sea\" to drown him;
another metaphor telling her not to make his leave worse by her growing sadness.
The last line in a way threatens the lover saying, \"if you kill me, because we are one
and therefore breathe each other\'s breath, you, too, will die.\"
Basically, the tone of the poem is sorrowful in that neither lover wants to leave the
other and Donne/the speaker is trying to tell his/her lover not to make the good-bye
more painful by crying excessively.

Commentary on Valediction: of Weeping

The first conceitThe second conceitThe third conceit

Donne is leaving England by sea. He talks in the final stanza of the possibility of actual storms on his
voyage. So the image of water comes very naturally to him. Too much water is a dangerous thing, and he
applies this to the water of tears caused by overmuch weeping. He brilliantly uses three conceits to
reason the need not to cry too much.

The first conceit

The first conceit, in the first stanza, is of tears as coins and fruit.

 Donne uses the parallel of coins being stamped with someone's face (here, the sovereign's) to
give them validity, to tears being stamped with the beloved's face
 He reaches this parallel by using the conventional Elizabethan idea of tears mirroring or reflecting
the face of the beloved
 So ‘by this Mintage they are something worth'. Tears are precious
 They are also ‘Fruits of much griefe', since their shape looks like fruit, and also like the womb of a
pregnant woman
 The combining of the two conceits (of coins and fruit) leads to the paradox:

When a tear falls, that thou falst which it bore

 The real point emerges in l.9:

So thou and I are nothing then, when on a diverse [different] shore

since the tears cannot reflect each other then and so have no validity. This becomes the source of
existential angst for the poet – concern about whether the lovers continue to exist once apart.

The second conceit

 In the second stanza, the conceit is of tears as worlds or globes, again picturing them
as round.

 This conceit takes up the idea of all and nothing. In Donne's day, a globe was typically a sphere
covered by leather cut to the shapes of the various continents and seas
 His beloved's reflected image in his tears becomes his world
 He then moves the conceit forward by thinking of her tears as well. Her tears fall on his, and so
her tears are like a deluge from heaven drowning his world – a second flood
 The story of Noah's flood stands behind the text here, especially Genesis 7:11 (‘the floodgates of
the heavens were opened' NIV). So the stanza ends in dissolution, too.

The third conceit

The third stanza uses the conceit of tears as tides and seas.

 Donne's beloved is the moon, since it is the moon that draws up the tidal force of the sea
 She is ‘more than Moone' since she not only draws up the tides, but drowns the land.
 He climaxes with the wonderful phrase ‘Weepe me not dead, in thy armes ...'. This is how
destructive weeping really is
 He sees it, too, as an ‘emblem' (l.7) of the real storm surge that he could be experiencing. An
emblem is a sign of something
 Having mentioned the idea of a storm, he concludes with the other feature of lovers' grief, sighs,
which, appropriately, are symbols of high winds
 So the final argument against grieving is that it could well be an omen of a real disaster: an
invitation to fate. ‘Hasts' here is the older spelling for ‘hastes'.
CRITICAL APPRECIATION

 The poem A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning was written
practically at the same time, when the poet was about to leave for
a visit to a foreign country. The poet wants to tell his wife to take
this temporary separation in her stride and neither to lament or
weep, for after all, this will only disturb the peace of mind of both
staying at different places. How to take a separation with tears or
sighs or with patience and resignation, this is the theme of the
poem. Playing on the image of floods and tides, the poet ultimately
comes to the conclusion that mutual understanding and
forebearance are necessary, for romantic lamenting and sighing
will only increase their sorrow and frustration.
 DEVELOPMENT OF THOUGHT
 In the beginning, the poet wants to weep out his heart—just to give
an outlet to his pent-up feeling for his wife—because he is going
 out and this separation is intolerable. Of course, the poet’s wife is
as unhappy as the poet himself at the prospect of separation and
loneliness. The poet’s tears are worth something because they bear
his wife’s stamp—”thy face coins, them,” but with copious tears,
the two are reduced to nothing. It is therefore better that they
should weep no more.
 The poet compares the tear to a globe and the tears shed by his
wife will overflow the world. His tears combined with hers, will
cause a deluge and much unhappiness. In fact, the deluge will
destroy both of them though they never intended that both of
them should die thus
 Tides and storms
 The poet’s wife, like the moon, is capable of causing high tides
capable of drowning the poet. Similarly, her sighs are powerful
enough to cause sea-storms which may hasten his death. So at the
end, the poet suggests that they should desist from sighing ‘one
another’s death’ because it would be mutually destructive. The
poet feels that weeping at the time of separation is natural, but it
has to be reduced to the minimum because it will destroy the peace
of mind of both of them.
 CRITICAL COMMENTS
 There is an organic development of imagery. One image leads to
the other. For example the tear is first compared to a coin and this
leads to the ‘stamp’, and the ‘mint’ and the ‘sovereign’ and the
‘worth’. The tear is round like a globe; the globe has a number of
continents; their profuse tears will drown the creation, the
universe and thereby destroy it like the Deluge. The beloved is like
the moon. She will cause ‘tides’ and ‘storms’ and subsequent
‘death’. All these images are interlinked, and convey a sense of
unified sensibility. There is another image of round and ‘pregnant’
tears. The tears are round and large like pregnancy, because they
hold a reflection of the beloved inside them. Similarly, the falling
of tears indicates the falling of the beloved, and thus being reduced
to ‘nothing’. The poet draws images from geography, theology and
astronomy. Even so he does not lose his grip on reality. The
situation of the impending separation is faced boldly and the need
of poise and patience is stressed. William Empson writes in this
 connection: “Its passion exhausts itself; it achieves at the end the
sense of reality he was looking for, and for some calm of mind.”

Comparison of two veledictions

http://www.literature-study-online.com/essays/donne-valedictions.html

https://beamingnotes.com/2014/09/23/summary-analysis-valediction-weeping-john-donne/

Themes in Valediction: of Weeping

SeparationUnity

Separation
The main theme is that of separation. There are two facets of this:

 Is the worth of the lovers' unity shattered by separation so that they are worthless, false on their
own? Is this what absence does – devalues us?
 Is the metaphysics of leave-taking, whilst natural, also unnatural since it could hasten the death,
or non-entity, of the other? He argues this much more fully in A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.

Unity
Implicit in the theme of separation is that of the nature and completeness of the lovers' world. Even in
their weeping, their tears mingle and form a unity – but it is a destructive unity. Her grief deluges and
drowns him. Donne has no answer for this in the poem.

Structure and versification in Valediction: of Weeping

A syllogismA new verse form

A syllogism
As in many poems, such as The Anniversarie, Twicknam Garden, The Dreame, A Valediction: of
Weeping is structured into three fairly long stanzas. The tri-partite divisions suggests the form of
the syllogism, an old logical form used from Greek time onwards, which consisted of a major premise, a
minor one and a conclusion. Donne would have been trained in this syllogistic method, both as a scholar
and as a lawyer. It gives the poems the impression of a dialectic form, and a firm logical progression of a
persuasive argument, even if, in actuality, the poem really is a shout of existential pain or passion.

A new verse form

Each stanza of A Valediction: of Weeping consists of nine lines, as with Twicknam Garden, but the line
lengths are quite different. Donne seems to invent a new verse form for almost every one of his Songs
and Sonnets. Here we are struck by the short dimeters of the first, fifth and sixth line of each stanza. The
fifth and sixth also rhyme together, so drawing attention to themselves, though only in the first stanza is
the couplet neatly tucked into itself. The final three lines rhyme together and so draw the weight of the
stanza to its ending, which is what a logical argument wants to do as well.