In Donne's metaphysical love poem, "A Valediction: Of Weeping," the central notion is that of spheres and cycles. This confirms Parfitt's assertion that "in Donne's lyrical world stasis is rare"[1], which is expressed in "A Valediction" through a constant sequence of creation and destruction and a corresponding tension between reality and representation. The form and structure of the poem are mimetic of these cycles, as well as acting metanarratively, revealing a self-awareness of the poetic voice of the artificial nature of the poem. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Donne's use of the spherical motifs of coins, tears, pregnancy, and the globe contribute to the ideas used in each stanza. The first metaphor is financial, of tears as coins: "Let me shed my tears before your face, while I stand here, for your face coins them and the stamp they bear, and thanks to this coinage they are worth something" (' A Valediction ', 1.1-4) The metaphor introduces the dynamic of reflection that is present throughout the poem, with the woman's face reflected in the narrator's tears, giving them value. The reflection is not a physical connection and therefore emphasizes both the emotional depth of their connection and the detachment that will occur upon the lover's separation. The harsh plosives of 'pour', 'before', 'bear', 'stamp' and 'by' contrast with the softer, liquid and sibilant sounds of 'let', 'my', 'mintage' and 'something ', further contributing to the tension between unification and separation. The transactional nature of the metaphor represents a cycle, due to the lovers' ironic separation: the narrator leaves to earn money so they can be together. The paradoxical nature of the poem echoes Donne's removal of love poetry from the court to a natural setting[2], from the public to the private, and yet remains universally recognisable. This shows that 'A Valediction' is a kind of metafiction, as the strict rhyme scheme, tripartite structure, and iambic meter express the poem as an artificial construct, and the poem is typically dialectical, with ideas, logic, and reasoning expressed in the three long stanzas, together they comprise a syllogism[3]. This tidy structure contrasts with the emotional and often illogical topic of love. Therefore, the dramatic situation of the lovers in the poem simultaneously allows identification with human emotions, and therefore the reader reads the poem both artificially and seriously. The hubris of the second stanza continues this blend of reality and representation in the image of a globe. , a "round ball" ("A Valediction", 2.1), at odds with the reality of the world we live in. The biblical allusion to Genesis[4] in the final couplet of the stanza, 'Till thy tears mingled with mine overflow/This world, by the waters sent from thee, my heaven is so dissolved' ('A Valediction', 2.8-9) once again presents the conflict and continuation between universal and individual experience. The increased length of the lines in this stanza (and the other two stanzas) from "On a Round Ball" ("A Valediction", 2.1) up to the ninth and last line are mimetic of the cycles presented in the poem, in this stanza from the creation of the "worker" who can "quickly make what was nothing, everything" ("A Valediction", 2.2-4) in "globe, yes, world, but that impression grows" ("A Valediction", 2.7), to the biblical destruction of the final verse, anticipating the short first verse of the next stanza. The biblical allusion to Noah's Arc places the. individual experience globally, thus acting in a hyperbolic manner. This is somewhat in line with Bell's argumentthat "most [of Donne's lyrics] are dramatic, colloquial, colloquial; they sound as if they were written to be recited or read aloud by Donne himself, and most likely were."[5]If the "dramatic" element is true, I would argue that the terms "colloquial" and "conversational" are contradictory to this. In their place, 'individual' and 'personal' as the antithesis to 'dramatic' might be better used, as Donne's poetry. is meticulously constructed and in the case of 'A Valediction' uses lofty language, not colloquialisms, the fourth line of this stanza claims to "make quickly what was nothing, everything" ("A Valediction", 2.4), which seems to be the case. a subtle reference to the process of transubstantiation, again a religious idea. This Christian theory, of the bread and wine being transformed into the literal body and blood of Christ, is also alluded to in Donne's "The Canonization", where the narrator "[you] [...] who have contracted the soul of the whole world, and have guided / in the lenses of your eyes"[6]. In this case it is not just the entire word that contracts, but "the soul of the entire world". Once again, this adds a dramatic universality to the lovers' personal experience. The cycle of creation and destruction is a primary concern in “A Valediction.” In the first stanza this is explored through the symbols of pregnancy and birth: For thus they are pregnant with you; They are fruits of much pain, emblems of more' ('A Valediction', 1.5-7) The rhyme of lines five and six are paired together only in this stanza, creating a structural 'fullness' that echoes that of a pregnancy. In this excerpt, pregnancy as a function of creation is explored, and the tears coined are “pregnant with you,” as well as “fruits of pain” and “emblems of other.” This creates a dichotomy between the tears which are the literal fruits of (the present) grief and the symbolic "emblems" of future grief over the lovers' separation. In both ways, this acts a reversal of the function of pregnancy, creating a loss rather than a gain, contributing to the idea of ​​creation and destruction. 'Fruits of much sorrow' alludes to the biblical fruit of the tree of knowledge, which causes the 'sorrow' of the Fall of man[7], so once again Donne universalises the individual experience of lovers. Biblical symbolism also recurs in the final stanza, in an inversion of the idea of ​​the breath of life: «Since you and I sigh each other's breath, / He who sighs the most is the cruelest and accelerates the death of the other". The biblical idea of ​​the breath as the giver of life creates a paradox here as each breath "accelerates the death of the other", and so Donne completes the cycle of life and death, creation and destruction in the final metaphor of the poem.[8] Again, there is a tension between the metaphorical and the literal, and the metaphor can be read to mean that physical expressions of pain cause emotional harm. The image of the lover as such is similar to that presented in The Canonization: «Call us what you will, we are made so by love; Call her one, call me another fly, We too are candles, and we die at our own expense, And in us we find the eagle and the dove.' (“The Canonization,” 3.1-4) The lovers here are shown as flies, killed by the flame of candles, candles shrinking, and eagles and doves, predators and prey. This shows a continuation of the theme of union as destructive found in "A Valediction", and I would argue that fundamentally Donne presents love as the ultimate cycle of creation and destruction. "A Valediction" therefore focuses on the meaning and consequences of love for both the individual and society. The non-traditional form of the poem is in keeping with Parfitt's view that "the sequences (of Elizabethan lyric) are based on the. 21