Spherical Images To Two Lover's Love example essay topic

A Valediction: for Weeping by John Donne 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 atthe 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 this 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 a repressed 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. Aset of pressed coins is a mintage as is the set of the speaker " 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 whic 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 andthe 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 hertha t 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 dissolve d 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, bu the still weeps as he proves inthe 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 these 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 "Who " 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 "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 t ocreate a complex love poem.