Read "A Valediction of Weeping" by John Donne online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
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. / For thus they be / Pregnant of thee; / Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more; / When a tear falls, that thou fall'st which it bore; / So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.
On a round ball / A workman, that hath copies by, can lay / An Europe, Afric, and an Asia, / And quickly make that, which was nothing, all. / So doth each tear, / Which thee doth wear, / A globe, yea world, by that impression grow, / Till thy tears mix'd with mine do overflow / This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolvèd so.