The Good Morrow : A Reading

The Good-Morrow

BY JOHN DONNE

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?

But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?

’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.

If ever any beauty I did see,

Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,

Which watch not one another out of fear;

For love, all love of other sights controls,

And makes one little room an everywhere.

Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,

Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,

Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;

Where can we find two better hemispheres,

Without sharp north, without declining west?

Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;

If our two loves be one, or, thou and I

Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

Source: The Norton Anthology of Poetry Third Edition (1983)

The Good Morrow is a poem taken from Donne’s collection of verses called the ‘Songs and Sonnets’ written during the period of 1597-1601 and was published after his death in 1633. These poems were addressed to Anne More, the niece of Lady Egerton with whom Donne is supposed to have had a secret relationship.

The poem deals with three different time frames- the past in the first stanza, the present in the second and the future in the third stanza corresponding to the three different states of flesh, mind and spirit. It is the affirmation of love by the speaker’s beloved and then its reciprocity. The poem begins with the feeling of wonder on the part of the speaker who cannot imagine what he and his beloved did before they fell in love. The lover feels that they were wasting their time in childish, country pleasures. The phrase “suck’d on country pleasures childishly’ suggests that they were bereft of the touch of mature love, the first adult experience that a man or a woman has in life. Love is that feeling which gives fulfillment to a person’s life and everything else appears mundane and ordinary before it. The other metaphysical conceit “ or snorted we in the seven sleeper’s den”  refers to the mythical Christian youths who slept for more than two centuries and a half in an underground cave where they had taken shelter to escape persecution by Diocletian of Ephesus. The verb “snorted” suggests the piggish obliviousness of the noblest feeling of love that the lovers suffered from before they fell in love. Love is that magic that helps to wake up the human beings from their dream-state to the grand emotion of love.

The second stanza of the poem takes us from the past to the present time. The poet awakens to a new morning with his beloved “And now good morrow to our waking souls” – this line hails and celebrates an arrival. The conceit is -the poet compares the new morning to the love that has awakened the souls for the first time to love. Love to them is a totally new feeling, a comprehensive experience which enrolls not only the little room in which the lovers live but the whole universe. Sea- discoverers have set out on expeditions and discovered new lands , old maps have been replaced by newer ones as more countries are discovered but this have not altered thee abounding love of the lovers. There love knows no alteration. The lines remind us so much of Shakespeare’s beautiful sonnet “ Love alters not with its brief hours and weeks/ But bears it out even to the edge of doom.”(Sonnet 116) The lover aspires for a reconciliation through the fusion of both their mental and physical elements and calls “Let us possese one world, each hath one and is one.”. The metaphysical conceit is that while the atlas of the world may change, while new worlds are discovered and many other new changes take place, their love will be their only world.

From the present, the poem passes into the hopes for the future in the third stanza. The lover says that they are not two separate human beings and each can be perceived in the eye ball of the other. This refers to the impression that is cast in the eyeball when one looks intently into the eyes of the other. We can visualize the two lovers looking in deep love into each others’ eyes. The lover feels that there cannot be another better world than the one that their love brings for them. It is love which is free from the biting cold of the Northern winds and will not decline like the setting sun in the west. This implies that their love is so warm and passionate that nothing can make it pale and dull. Their love is eternal and immortal. The world of love is free from wants and deficiencies. In  Donne’s poem “ A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” he presents a beautiful conceit of a compass , the two legs of which are compared to two lovers, like the legs of a compass the lovers are separated from each other but remain joined in their hearts, their love not even slightly diminished by the separation. Donne’s beautiful presentation and innovative conceits makes the poem a pleasurable experience. Here the poet compares the perfect love of the lovers to two hemispheres which are closely held together in mutual attraction .It is warm with the passion of love and is never ending because only those things decompose the elements of which are not blended in proper and equal equations “whatever dyes was not mix’t equally” is a reference to St Thomas Aquineas who suggested that those things decompose the elements of which are not mixed equally, not blended in proper and equal equations. The love that the poet has is so perfectly mutual and proportionate that it cannot die. If the love is reciprocal and it forever remains so then the clutches of time and adversity will never stand as an obstacle. Herein will lay the superiority of their love, it will be beyond change, decay and death.”If our two loves be one, or thou and I / Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die.”Scholastic logic is used by Donne in defence of his argument. His love is everlasting because their pure hearts have created an unadulterated compound which according to that logic is incorruptible. This is perhaps what T. S. Eliot said of Donne “an example of tough reasonableness’.

 The poem follows an interesting syllogism across the different time frames.  We move with the poet through the past, present and future. The treatment of love in this poem is distinct and has retained its interest for modern readers also. But the last “If” of the ending lines leave a pungent taste questioning the very authority and firmness of the previous stanzas. Was their love not real enough? Was the poet-lovers love not reciprocated in equal measures? These will remain questions that will not deter the interest of the poem but further increase its credibility and curiosity in the readers mind.