John Donne: The Good-Morrow

Ø  Donne was born in London, into a recusant Roman Catholic family when the practice of that religion was illegal in England.

Ø  Donne spent much of his considerable inheritance on women, literature, pastimes and travel.

Ø  Walton tells us that when Donne wrote to his wife to tell her about losing his post, he wrote after his name: John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done.

Ø  In 1615, he became an Anglican priest, although he did not want to take Anglican orders.

Ø  He did so because King James I persistently ordered it. In 1621, he was appointed the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

·       William Drummond of Hawthornden spoke of poets who use “Metaphysical Ideas and Scholastical Quiditties”

·       John Dryden accused Donne of affecting the metaphysics: “He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softnesses of love.”

·       In the chapter on Abraham Cowley in his Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779–81), Samuel Johnson refers to the beginning of the seventeenth century in which there “appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets“.

·       “The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and, to show their learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses…” Samuel Johnson

·       “The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions…” Samuel Johnson

·       “…their learning instructs, and their subtilty surprises” Samuel Johnson

·       “…but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.” Dr. Johnson

·       During the course of the 1920s, T.S. Eliot did much to establish the importance of the school, both through his critical writing and by applying their method in his own work. In fact, he found it a model for his poetry.

Metaphysical Conceit

·       During the Renaissance, the term ‘conceit’ (related to the word concept) indicated any particularly fanciful expression of wit, and was later used pejoratively of outlandish poetic metaphors.

·       The metaphysical conceit differs from an extended analogy in the sense that it does not have a clear-cut relationship between the things being compared.

·       According to Helen Gardner, “a conceit is a comparison whose ingenuity is more striking than its justness” and that “a comparison becomes a conceit when we are made to concede likeness while being strongly conscious of unlikeness.” An example of the latter occurs in John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”, in which a couple faced with absence from each other is likened to a compass.

·       The metaphysical conceit is often imaginative, exploring specific parts of an experience. John Donne’s “The Flea” is a poem seemingly about fleas in a bed.

Written while Donne was a student at Lincoln’s Inn [School of Law]

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. †

[Love just alike in all, none of these loves can die.]*

† Metaphysical conceits

*Emendation by Redpath

Fancies: imaginary, not real

dream of thee: All the women that I met before you were just prefiguring, ‘dreams’ of you [present love]

Meter

Mostly written iambic

And now good-morrow to our waking souls (8)  5 iambic feet

Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one (14)  6 iambic feet

A.    Perhaps he wanted to mean a love poem

2.     “I wonder, by my troth”. Conveys the sense of

A.    Speaker’s amazement

3.     “I wonder, by my troth”. “By my troth” was

A.    An oath of assertion, now obsolete

4.     “But sucked on country pleasures…” What does the speaker mean by “country pleasures”?

A.    The lovers were like infants or the unsophisticated people who enjoy only rustic pleasures [as opposed to the sophisticated people of the court or the city]

5.     “Were we not weaned till then?/But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?” This contrast between the milk and the meat is

A.    Biblical

6.     “But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?” Here ‘childishly’ rhymes with?

A.    ‘I’ [first line]

7.     “Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?”. Here, ‘snorted’ is an example of

A.    colloquialism

8.     Who were the “Seven Sleepers” ?

A.    In a Catholic legend, seven Christian youths, persecuted for their faith during the reign of the Roman emperor Decius, fled to the shelter of a cave where they slept and awoke after 187 years.

9.     “Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?” What does the speaker imply here?

A.    Before their falling in love, they could not be said to have been living, only sleeping

10.   “’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.” Here, “but this” means

A.    Except for our love

11.     “If ever any beauty I did see,/Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.” What does the speaker mean by ‘beauty’?

A.    May be both abstract and/or metonymically to beautiful women.

12.    “If ever any beauty I did see,/Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.” What philosophy is implicit here?

A.    Platonic [distinction between the Real and the world of illusion]

13.    The Good-Morrow can be read as

A.    A spiritual aubade [love poem uttered at dawn]

14.   What is the significance of the title “Good-Morrow”?

A.    The poet’s soul addresses that of his mistress at the moment of love’s awakening.

15.    “For love, all love of other sights controls”. What is the meaning?

A.    Love takes away all desires to see other persons and things

16.   “Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.” How many worlds do the lovers possess in the poem?

A.    Two

B.     One

C.    Four

D.    Not sure, ambiguous

17.    “My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,/ And true plain hearts do in the faces rest”. Donne might be referring here to

A.    The reflection of the minds in the eyes as a popular belief

B.     Condiforms or maps where hemispheres were shaped like hearts

C.    The shapes of the faces making a heart-shape

18.   “Without sharp north, without declining west?” The poet here refers to

A.    Cold north wind and the decline of the sun in the west

19.   “Without sharp north, without declining west?” What does the poet suggest?

A.    The world of the lovers is superior to the earth in the sense that their world is not afflicted by cold or subject to decline.

20.  “Whatever dies, was not mixed equally”. The poet is here referring to

A.    A medieval theory of medicine [alchemy] that diseases are caused by an imbalance in bodily humors.

21.    “Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.” This last line of the poem is

A.    Confusing [a number of different versions are also found]