A VALEDICTION1 OF WEEPING2 (FROM THE SONGS & SONETS3)

A Valediction^¹ of Weeping^²

(from The Songs & Sonets^³)

Form: iambic, pentameters + iambic dimeters + a final iambic heptameters (255522557)

Rhyme scheme: ABBACCDDD

2 LET me / pour forth^⁴
5 My tears / before^⁵ / thy^⁶ face, / whilst I / stay here^⁷,
5 For thy / face coins / them, and / thy stamp / they bear,
5 And by / this min/tage they / are some/thing worth.^⁸
2 For thus^⁹ / they be
2 Pregnant^¹⁰ / of thee ;
5 Fruits of / much grief^¹¹ / they are, / emblems / of more^¹²;
5 When a / tear falls, / that thou^¹³ / fall’st which / it bore^¹⁴; polyptoton
7 So thou^¹⁵ / and I / are no/thing then, / when on / a di/vers shore^¹⁶.

2 On a / round ball
5 A work/man^¹⁷, that / hath^¹⁸ co/pies^¹⁹ by, / can lay
5 An Eu/rope, Af/ric, and / an A/sia,
5 And quick/ly make / that, which / was no/thing, all.^²⁰
2 So doth^²¹ / each tear,
2 Which thee / doth wear^²²,
5 A globe, / yea^²³ world, / by that / impres/sion grow^²⁴,
5 Till thy / tears mix’d / with mine / do o/verflow^²⁵
7 This world, / by wa/ters sent / from thee, / my heav’n / dissol/vèd so.^²⁶

2 O ! more / than moon^²⁷,
5 Draw not / up seas / to drown / me in / thy sphere;^²⁸
5 Weep me / not dead, / in thine / arms, but / forbear
5 To teach^²⁹ / the sea, / what it / may do / too soon ;
2 Let not / the wind
2 Exam/ple find
5 To do / me more / harm than / it pur/poseth:
5 Since^³⁰ thou / and I / sigh one / ano/ther’s breath^³¹,
7 Whoe’er / sighs most / is cru/ellest, / and hastes / the o/ther’s death.^³²

Donne’s fascination with spheres rests partly on the perfection of these shapes and partly on the near-infinite associations that can be drawn from them.

In A Valediction: Of Weeping, the speaker uses the spherical shape of tears to draw out associations with pregnancy, globes, the world, and the moon.

As the speaker cries, each tear contains a miniature reflection of the beloved, yet another instance in which the sphere demonstrates the idealized personality and physicality of the person being addressed.

As in

The Sun Rising,
The Good-Morrow, and

in A Valediction: Of Weeping Donne envisions a lover or pair of lovers as being entire worlds unto themselves.

Reflections

Throughout his love poetry, Donne makes reference to the reflections that appear in eyes and tears.

With this motif, Donne emphasizes the way in which lovers and their perfect love might contain one another, forming complete, whole worlds.

A Valediction: Of Weeping portrays the process of leave-taking occurring between the two lovers.

As the speaker cries, he knows that the image of his beloved is reflected in his tears.

And as the tear falls away, so too will the speaker move farther away from his beloved until they are finally separated.

The association of love and death is quite conventional

- it goes back to the Biblical Song of Songs.

The speaker explains that tears afford danger, in that one of the lovers might drown.

Allusions

Edward Wright (1558-1615) had worked out the mathematics that enabled mapmakers to project flat shapes onto a sphere.

Notice the allusion to Noah’s Flood – a flood caused by the mixing of both lovers’ tears – in the second stanza.

Notice the allusion to the natural elements in the fourth stanza

- implied land (i.e. earth), the sea (i.e. water), wind (i.e. air) and fire (the lovers’ passion).

Semantic field: optics, death.

1 valediction – poem that says goodbye

2 weeping – crying, tears

3 that’s how he spelt it, though we spell it ‘sonnets’

4 to pour forth – express, weep

5 before – (in this case) in front of

6 thy – your

7 whilst I stay here – while I am still here

8 i.e. the tears reflect her likeness, as a coin carries the likeness of a ruler, and this gives them value

9 thus – in this way

10 pregnant – full

11 grief – sorrow, sadness

12 emblems of more – an emblem is a picture with a symbolic content; the tear carrying her likeness breaks on falling to the ground, which he interprets as an image of how they too will be broken to ‘nothing’ when parted from each other. So, the tears are ‘emblems of more grief. Moreover, the tears are ‘emblems of more’ in that they are the central conceit of the entire poem. Finally, there is a possible pun on the surname of his wife, Anne More.

13 that thou – that person

14 bore – a. carried; b. gave birth to

15 thou – (archaic) you

16 on a divers shore – in different countries, with the sea between them

17 workman – artisan

18 hath – (archaic) has

19 copies – several pieces of paper (the globe could not be covered with a single sheet)

20 i.e. the plain globe is like a nought, or ‘nothing’; when a map is pasted onto it, it represents the world, or ‘all’

21 doth – (archaic) does

22 which thee doth wear – which bears your image

23 yea – (emphatic) yes

24 i.e. his blank tears become a world when they carry her image, because she is the world to him

25 do overflow – (emphatic) overflow, flood

26 i.e. as the lady (the poet’s heaven) begins to weep she drowns all the little worlds that her image has made of his tears

27 more than the moon – you, Anne More, are brighter and more glorious than the moon

28 i.e. ‘sphere’ refers both to the range of power of a heavenly body (which would now be described as its gravitational field), and to her power over him. The moon has power over the tides, but she is more powerful, in that she draws forth seas of tears which destroy worlds

29 forebear to teach – do not teach

30 since – given that (ya que)

31 in both Greek and Latin the same word means both ‘breath’ and ‘soul’

32 sighing was believed to shorten life

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