Commentary on Valediction: of Weeping

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

Copyright to Cartography Associates, available through Creative Commons 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'.

Investigating the three conceits in Valediction: of Weeping

Compare Donne's use of tears in A Valediction: of Weeping with their use in his Twicknam Garden.
- At what point in A Valediction: of Weeping does Donne actually start arguing against any more tears?
Compare and contrast the way Donne uses the imagery of sighs in Song: ‘Sweetest love, I do not go' and A Valediction: of Weeping.

English Standard Version
King James Version

¹Then the Lord said to Noah, Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. ²Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, ³and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth. ⁴For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground. ⁵And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him. ⁶Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. ⁷And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. ⁸Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, ⁹two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. ¹⁰And after seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth. ¹¹In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. ¹²And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. ¹³On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark, ¹⁴they and every beast, according to its kind, and all the livestock according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, according to its kind, and every bird, according to its kind, every winged creature. ¹⁵They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh in which there was the breath of life. ¹⁶And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. And the Lord shut him in. ¹⁷The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. ¹⁸The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. ¹⁹And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. ²⁰The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. ²¹And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind. ²²Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. ²³He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark. ²⁴And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days.

¹And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. ²Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. ³Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth. ⁴For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. ⁵And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him. ⁶And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. ⁷And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. ⁸Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth, ⁹There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah. ¹⁰And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. ¹¹In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. ¹²And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. ¹³In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark; ¹⁴They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort. ¹⁵And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life. ¹⁶And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in. ¹⁷And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. ¹⁸And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. ¹⁹And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. ²⁰Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. ²¹And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: ²²All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. ²³And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. ²⁴And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

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