Weeping By John Donne Essay Research Paper — страница 2

joiningtheir bodily fluids and therefore they are one. The lover’s tearsflood the speaker’s world and/orheaven. The second and third stanzas are both pleas from the speakerto his lover to stop hercrying, for it destroys their worlds (which is the same world). In the third stanza the speaker uses more round images, the”spherical conceit,” bybringing the moon into his extended metaphor. By describing theirlove as “more than moon”(19), he promotes their love to a non-earthly or “holy” love (likethe “canonized” love in “TheCanonization”). They are above the human world in the celestialspheres. By placing the line”Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere” (20), he is in “hersphere” where her tears drownhim, and the moon by controlling the rising tide

drowns him. Insteadof all the negativeconnotations (including many references to dying) associated withleaving, he beckons her tostop trying to turn the sea into a wild rage: “. . . but forbear/ Toteach the sea what it may do toosoon.” (20-21). In the conclusion of the third stanza Donne comparessighs to the wind on thesea as he does in “The Canonization” and “A Valediction: ForbiddingMourning.” The line,”Since thou and I sigh one another’s breath,” (25) further provesthat they live in the same world,where they cry into the same seas and breath the same breath. Hebegs his lover not to cry orsigh, because “Whoe’er sighs most is cruelest, and hastes the other’sdeath.” (26) As they sigh,their sighs create wind which upsets the water. The rough water,

onwhich the speaker is sailing,could drown him. Donne’s mastery of comparison allows him to create an in-depthmetaphor comparingspherical images to two lover’s love. He uses some of the sameimages as he does in his otherpoems for example: holy love and tears in “The Canonization,” spheresin “A Valediction:Forbidding Mourning” and “The Sun Rising,” and two worlds becomingone in “The Good-Morrow” and “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.” Also in the other valediction poem Donneincludes the line “No tear floods, nor sigh tempest move.” (6) Thisidea is mentioned in “AValediction: Of Weeping” too. In The New Princeton Encyclopedia ofPoetry and Poetics, theauthors, Alex Preminger and T.F. Brogan state in their definition ofMetaphysical poetry

thatmetaphysical poets “[favor] a kind of imagery which requires themeditation of the intellect forfull comprehension, metaphysical poetry shows relatively no interestin sensuous imagery.”(767) Because Donne uses the simple round images to symbolize adeeper meaning, he has usedthe “metaphysical conceit” coupled with metaphor and paradox tocreate a complex love poem.