What does drown an eye mean?

Answer 1

The expression occurs in Shakespeare's Sonnet 30:

"Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,"

and something similar in The Rape of Lucrece:

"Their gentle sex to weep are often willing;

Grieving themselves to guess at others' smarts,

And then they drown their eyes or break their hearts."

Either way, the image is of an eye so full of water it is drowning--it means crying or weeping. The passage in the sonnet is about weeping for friends who have died. The passage in Lucrece says that women are often willing to cry rather than break their hearts in pity of others' sorrows.