Metaphysical Relationships

This analysis was from a British Literature class.

John Donne's poem “A Valediction: Of Weeping,” uses extensive metaphors and hyperbole to dissuade lovers from weeping for one another while separated. The conceits expressed in the poem are metaphysical, implying that the two lovers are connected in a way that allows their relationship to continue while physically apart from each other. Once the speaker establishes metaphysical connections between himself and his lover, he details how this relationship would suffer if either of them were to grieve over their physical separation.
Since the poem is a valediction, it is meant to be delivered before the speaker must leave his beloved. This particular valediction is meant to ease the pain of separation between two lovers. In the first stanza the speaker asks to weep in front of his lover, rather than doing so after he has left. Here Donne introduces the elaborate metaphor that compares his tears to money because of the reflection of her face in them. Line four expands on this metaphor, saying that since his tears are coins bearing her face, they have worth in her presence. The speaker also compares the tears to fruit, both round objects that fall to the ground. Since they are both emblems of his lover, each time one falls, so does a part of his love until there is none left. Furthermore, when the lovers are apart from each other, the fallen tears and fruits become worthless since they do not reflect the lover for whom they are shed.
In the second stanza, Donne explains how a cartographer can make a simple ball into a globe, which he uses to represent the whole Earth, making “that, which was nothing, all.” (line 13) Similarly, he states that their combined tears, which would normally be nothing, would be enough to flood this world, ruining any chance he would have of returning to her. This metaphor not only implies emotional consequences of weeping, like the loss of love through tears in the first stanza, but also suggests highly exaggerated physical consequences. The tears shed in this metaphor destroy not only the physical world, but also the speaker's heaven, since his heaven is to live with his love. In saying this, the speaker is boldly declaring that he would rather live with his love than die and ascend to heaven. This tells a great deal about the speaker's determination to return to his love, and her value in his eyes.
The metaphysical conceit of the third stanza uses the speaker's lover herself as the tenor, rather than their tears. She is compared to the moon, which once again has the power to drown him, this time by raising the already tear-swelled tides. She is described as “More than moon,” (line 18) both because she has more value to the speaker than the moon, and because through the conceit she can bring about a second Noah's flood, while the Moon only influences the tides. With the storm of Noah's flood in mind, the speaker makes the comparison of heavy winds to breathing. Through this, he warns against sighing in addition to weeping, adding to it the conceit that the two lovers share the same breath. Expanding on this, he says that since they share the same breath, “Whoe'er sighs most is cruelest, and hastes the other's death.” (line 26) This hyperbole states the central theme of the poem: those who truly love each other should not mourn a temporary separation.
All three of the metaphysical conceits Donne makes in this poem use round objects, suggesting the speaker's return since all circles end where they started. From this and lines such as “Weep me not dead,” (line 20) the speaker tells his lover to hope for his return rather than mourning him as dead. In this, the poem is meant to console the beloved and inspire courage, faith, and patience rather than the sorrow its name implies. Through these values the lovers could maintain their metaphysical relationship while separated.