The Spherical Image as the Central Paradox in Valediction: for Weeping

The Spherical Image as the Central Paradox in Valediction for crying In John Donnes A Valediction for Weeping, the speaker consoles his buffer before leaving on a sea voyage and begs her not to cry. Crying, the speaker tells his lover this poem at the docks before he boards his ship going abroad. Donne drug abuses a global 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 part 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 to his lover before his waiver 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 halt 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 are pressed 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 business four has an expand meaning. A set of pressed coins is a mintage as is the set of the speakers tears, but the impression on the coin (the lovers face) can also be a mintage. ... ...he others 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. Donnes mastery of comparison allows him to create an in-depth metaphor comparing spherical images to two lovers love. He uses some of the same images as he does in his other po ems for example holy love and tears in The Canonization, spheres in A Valediction grisly 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 A Valediction Of Weeping too. Donne uses the simple round images to symbolize a deeper meaning united with metaphor and paradox to create a complex love poem.