Date sent:        Tue, 14 May 1996 23:00:19, -0500



     In John Donne's "A Valediction: for Weeping," the speaker 
consoles his lover before
leaving on a sea voyage and begs her not to cry.  Crying, the speaker 
tells his lover this poem at
the docks before he boards his ship going abroad.  Donne, who 
pioneered (though never coined
the term) the "metaphysical conceit" uses a spherical image as the 
central metaphor in his poem. 
When Donne uses irony, paradox, and hyperbole including the use of 
round images such as:
coins, globes, and tears he strengthens the spherical conceit.  By 
comparing two "seeming"
opposites like tears and love as his conceit, Donne uses the 
spherical image as the central
paradox in "A Valediction: Of Weeping."  
     Donne opens the poem with the speaker crying while talking to 
his lover before his
departure abroad.  His first spherical images are in the first stanza,
 and they are tears and coins: 
          "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," (1-4)

Both the coins and his tears have "worth," literal and figurative 
values respectively.  His tears fall
from his face because he hurts for leaving, something no amount of 
coins can pay to alleviate. 
Like coins being stamped out of a sheet of metal, his tears are 
pressed from his eyes.   Because
water reflects her image and tears are made out of water, the stamp 
image has a double meaning
too.  The tears equal the lover.  The mintage mentioned in line four 
has an expanded meaning.  A
set of pressed coins is a mintage as is the set of the speaker's 
tears, but the impression on the coin
(the lover's face) can also be a mintage.
     As the beginning of the stanza opens with a circular image, the 
second half of the stanza
includes even more circular images:
          "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." (5-9)
First, the speaker says the tears, because they bear the lover's face,
 are pregnant of her (a sick,
but round image used for comparison). The fruit and the emblem are 
round images describing
their tears, the emblem symbolizes both the literal round image and 
the lover's face (the tear
bears her "emblem" or face).   As the tear bearing her image falls, 
the speaker fears the ending of
their love if she cries, as the speaker states: "So thou and I are 
nothing then, when on a diverse
shore" (9). In the second stanza, the speaker tries to convince her 
that they are still together, even
when they are separated, and begs her not to weep.
     The second stanza opens with a ball image forming out of nothing 
into a globe.  A worker
can take "a round ball . . .and quickly make that, which was nothing, 
all" (12).  The globe and
their love represent all, because the globe represents all of the 
entire world, where as, the love
encompasses all of their individual worlds or spheres.   They, the 
lovers, have their own worlds,
and like in "The Good Morrow" their two worlds become one, where the 
power of love binds the
two hemispheres (in "The Good Morrow") or globes (in "A Valediction: 
Of Weeping").  The
speaker goes on to compare their love to the globe in the rest of the 
stanza:
          "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; waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolvèd so." (14-
18)
Both of their tears flow into the same waters, and therefore are one. 
 The speaker's attitude is
hypercritical during this stanza because he begs her not to cry, but 
he still weeps as he proves in
the line "Till thy tears mixed with mine do overflow" (16).  By 
loving each other they become
one.  Donne used a flea to "mingle" the blood of the speaker and his 
love in "The Flea," joining
their bodily fluids and therefore they are one.  The lover's tears 
flood the speaker's world and/or
heaven.  The second and third stanzas are both pleas from the speaker 
to his lover to stop her
crying, for it destroys their worlds (which is the same world).  
     In the third stanza the speaker uses more round images, the 
"spherical conceit," by
bringing the moon into his extended metaphor.  By describing their 
love as "more than moon"
(19), he promotes their love to a non-earthly or "holy" love (like 
the "canonized" love in "The
Canonization").  They are above the human world in the celestial 
spheres.  By placing the line
"Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere" (20), he is in "her 
sphere" where her tears drown
him, and the moon by controlling the rising tide drowns him.  Instead 
of all the negative
connotations (including many references to dying) associated with 
leaving, he beckons her to
stop trying to turn the sea into a wild rage: ". . . but forbear/ To 
teach the sea what it may do too
soon." (20-21).  In the conclusion of the third stanza Donne compares 
sighs to the wind on the
sea as he does in "The Canonization" and "A Valediction: Forbidding 
Mourning."  The line,
"Since thou and I sigh one another's breath," (25) further proves 
that they live in the same world,
where they cry into the same seas and breath the same breath.  He 
begs his lover not to cry or
sigh, because "Whoe'er sighs most is cruelest, and hastes the other's 
death." (26) As they sigh,
their sighs create wind which upsets the water.  The rough water, on 
which the speaker is sailing,
could drown him.
     Donne's mastery of comparison allows him to create an in-depth 
metaphor comparing
spherical images to two lover's love.  He uses some of the same 
images as he does in his other
poems for example: holy love and tears in "The Canonization," spheres 
in "A Valediction:
Forbidding Mourning" and "The Sun Rising," and two worlds becoming 
one in "The Good-Morrow" and "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning."  
Also in the other valediction poem Donne
includes the line "No tear floods, nor sigh tempest move." (6) This 
idea is mentioned in  "A
Valediction: Of Weeping" too.  In The New Princeton Encyclopedia of 
Poetry and Poetics, the
authors, Alex Preminger and T.F. Brogan state in their definition of 
Metaphysical poetry that
metaphysical poets "[favor] a kind of imagery which requires the 
meditation of the intellect for
full comprehension, metaphysical poetry shows relatively no interest 
in sensuous imagery."
(767) Because Donne uses the simple round images to symbolize a 
deeper meaning, he has used
the "metaphysical conceit" coupled with metaphor and paradox to 
create a complex love poem.

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 <br><A HREF="X.TXT">X.TXT </A>
 <br><i>Uploader </i>:Owen Boger
 <br><i>Email </i>: qrhu17a@prodigy.com
 <br><i>Language </i>: English
 <br><i>Subject </i>: John Donne
 <br><i>Title </i>: A Valediction of Weeping -- A Critical Review
 <br><i>Grade </i>: 91%
 <br><i>System </i>: High School
 <br><i>Age </i>: 18 (when turned in)
 <br><i>Country </i>: USA
 <br><i>Comments </i>: A critical review of John Donne's poem 
covering the spherical image
throughout the poem.  
 <br><i>Where I got Evil House of Cheat Address </i>: Dave Matthews 
usenet newsgroup
 <br><i>Date </i>: 5/9/1996