A Valediction: of Weeping

        Let me pour forth

My tears before thy face, whilst I stay hereWhilst 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 coinscoins 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

         PregnantPregnant 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 shorediverse shore On different lands.

         On a round ballround ball That is, the Earth

A workman that hath copies by, can lay

An Europe, AfricAfric Archaic reference to Africa, used here as two syllables to fit the fixed meter of the line, and an AsiaAsia Pronounced ‘Ay-zee-ay’, rhyming with “lay”,

And quickly make that, which was nothingnothing 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 forbearforbear 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 deathWhoe’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).