John Donne’s poem “A Valediction of Weeping” portrays a relationship where sadness seems to operate as a means of currency. The speaker compares their tears to coins produced in the image of their partner, explaining that “thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear, / And by this mintage they are something worth” (3-4). Their partner sees the speaker’s sadness, and molds it into something to trade away. Yet, the tears only gain meaning through this partner’s affirmation of their worth. The partner’s face marks the front of this metaphorical coin, irremovably and importantly emblazoned like George Washington on the quarter.
For me, the coin imagery altered the significance of the first two lines: “Let me pour forth / My tears before thy face whilst I stay here.” (1-2) When I reread these lines thinking about tears as something monetary, I pictured the speaker pouring forth a sleeve of change the way a customer might at a bank teller’s window, or at a cashier’s register. The speaker sees this exchange as holding some transactional quality, as if they had only a moment to compensate for the time, attention, and product they’d used up. The following lines further establish this currency’s specificity: “When a tear falls, that Thou falls which it bore, / So thou and I are nothing then, when on a diverse shore.” (8-9). These tears maintain no significance on some distant land, or ‘diverse shore.’ However, inside the nation of this relationship, they govern the economy.
Donne introduces other metaphors throughout the poem (i.e also comparing tears to globes) but the final line underscores the monetary nature of the speaker’s relationship. The speaker expresses real resentment, saying that “Since thou and I sigh one another’s breath, / Who’er sighs most is cruelest, and hastes the other’s death.” (26-27). Because these two partners remain so closely interconnected, the greater pain of one inflicts fatal damage to the other. The one who sighs more in a way steals something from the other; feeling sadness morphs into an action deeply cruel and somehow murderous. Rather than supporting each other through pain, each partner hoards emotion, and selfishly places blame. Their relationship circulates around the trading of currency, and thus remains antithetical to truly intimate connection.
I also found this poem interesting, especially the idea of tears dictating the economy and holding complete control over people and their lives. That’s how I interpreted the connection of tears to globes as well, like each tear was contributing to something much greater and deciding the fates of lives (as money does).