The poem is titled as a valediction, which is a formal way of farewell, of saying goodbye. It is written in three equally structured stanzas with a rich usage of metaphorical language.
The first stanza reveals the poem’s main theme and intention of writing. A lover is standing in front of his loved one, pouring out his tears before her before departing on a dangerous journey. The value and meaning of the tears are here metaphorically described, with words like coins, fruits and pregnant, to express the significance of the moment and tears shed. The stanza abruptly ends with a contrasting “nothing” as opposed to the previous richness of metaphorical language, expressing that the distance between the lovers will turn their love into nothing.
The second stanza is where the meaning of the tears, the weeping, is brought to a hyperbolic level, with metaphors which compares them to the world itself. Just like the nothingness of a round ball, was transformed and given meaning of the world, the tears shed are the lovers’ world at that moment of parting.
The third stanza is the grimmest and expresses the biggest fear of lovers, which is parting by death. The lover warns his loved one to weep him not dead, to not cry too much out of fear it might bring bad omen upon them and foreshadow his death.
The poem’s main theme is the lovers’ grief. It also includes metaphysical contemplation of meaning of things, life, and death. Most prominent example is the paradoxical turning of “nothing into all”, as a way to describe the significance of giving something its meaning.
