A Valediction: of Weeping

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations Let me pour forth My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here Whilst I stay here This poem is a valediction, meaning that it is an act of saying goodbye to someone. Donne wrote other poems with “Valediction” in the title, including “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” “A Valediction of My Name,” and “Valediction to his Book.” , For thy face coins coins Makes, as a mint foundry stamps/makes coins. Compare this line with “As Kings do coynes, to which their stamps impart” from Donne’s poem, “Image of her whom I love, more then she.” them, and thy stamp they bear, And by this mintage they are something worth, For thus they be Pregnant Pregnant Also meaning: filled with emotion or significance, rich in meaning or implication 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 diverse shore On different lands . On a round ball round ball That is, the Earth A workman that hath copies by, can lay An Europe, Afric Afric Archaic reference to Africa, used here as two syllables to fit the fixed meter of the line , and an Asia Asia Pronounced ‘Ay-zee-ay’, rhyming with “lay” , And quickly make that, which was nothing nothing Both the “round ball” and later “each tear” are likened to a zero (“0”) , 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. O more than moon, Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere, Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear forbear When used as a verb, to avoid or refrain from doing something 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 Whoe’er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other’s death Compare to the lines “When thou sigh’st, thou sigh’st not wind, / But sigh’st my soul away” from Donne’s poem, “ Song: Sweetest love, I do not go ” (lines 25-26) .