The Good- Morrow. First stanza:

Transcription

1 John Donne s Poetry

2 The Good- Morrow Love poem published in collection called Songs & Sonnets Reader = eavesdropper on poet talking to lover rather than poet describing lover Most romantic poetry describes physical attributes of beloved, but Donne s doesn t First stanza: 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. Rather than a physical love, this stanza sets up the poem to be about a spiritual love 7 sleepers: Christian youths who hid in a cave and slept for 187 years to escape pagan persecution Poem is describing that they have found something real they are experiencing a sort of awakening and the world is different because of it

3 Second stanza: 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. Describes the fact that true and spiritual love empowers lovers and takes away all fears about love little room an everywhere = they are all they need when they are together Two interpretations to the reference of maps: 1. Shows that these two lovers can never be separated reinforcing the idea of spiritual love; the Spirit cannot be separated from the flesh, much like these two lovers can t be separated 2. Simply that others can go discover things and new worlds but those ventures pale in comparison to the importance of the love the couple has just discovered Third stanza: 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. It begins with two lovers gazing into each other s eyes, a practice called looking babies in the time period Each lover, gazing into the partner s eyes, sees his/her face reflected, but at the same time sees the lover s eyeball as a hemisphere. Two hemispheres joined and there are two lovers involved constitute a sphere and thus a world, as well as the traditional symbol of perfection

4 Some critics believe that the reference to maps here is another reference to love because the type of maps he would have been familiar with at the time were shaped like hearts Stanza suggests that their love is perfect: Whatever dies was not mixed equally references the philosophy taught that elements that were imperfectly mixed made matter mutable and mortal, elements perfectly mixed made matter immutable and immortal The Song Themes: Honesty and Women s Virtue

5 First stanza: Go and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me where all past years are, Or who cleft the devil s foot, Teach me to hear mermaids singing, Or to keep off envy s stinging, And find What wind Serves to advance an honest mind. Lists impossible tasks Mandrake: forked like lower part of human body thought to shriek when pulled from ground and to kill humans who heard it also thought to help women conceive Last line: suggests he feels that dishonest minds prosper, honest people do not Second stanza: If thou beest born to strange sights, Things invisible to see, Ride ten thousand days and nights, Till age snow white hairs on thee, Thou, when thou return st, wilt tell me, All strange wonders that befell thee, And swear, No where Lives a woman true, and fair.

6 If you re a person with ability to see strange things go and travel for a long time, travel until you re old ( age snow white hairs on thee ) you still won t find a woman true and fair Third stanza: If thou find st one, let me know, Such a pilgrimage were sweet; Yet do not, I would not go, Though at next door we might meet; Though she were true, when you met her, And last, till you write your letter, Yet she Will be False, ere I come, to two, or three. On the off chance you do find one, let me know I won t go see her even if she lives as close as next door she won t still be virtuous by the time I get there The Canonization In 1601 John Donne married Anne More secretly. She was his boss s 17-year-old niece, and he was imprisoned for almost a year for marrying someone so young. He wrote this poem expressing frustration of being away from his wife. First stanza: For God s sake hold your tongue, and let me love; Or chide my palsy, or my gout; My five gray hairs, or ruin d fortune flout; With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve; Take you a course, get you a place, Observe his Honour, or his Grace; Or the king s real, or his stamp d face Contemplate; what you will, approve, So you will let me love. Tells the speaker to shut up, back off, and let him (the poet) love If the speaker can t hold his tongue, he can criticize other shortcomings but not the poet s ability to love take you a course = get some career just focus on yourself, your wealth, and let me love Second stanza:

7 Alas! alas! Who s injured by my love? What merchant s ships have my sighs drown d? Who says my tears have overflow d his ground? When did my colds a forward spring remove? When did the heats which my veins fill Add one more to the plaguy bill? Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still Litigious men, which quarrels move, Though she and I do love. Love is not affecting anything; poet hasn t hurt anyone His sighs have not drowned ships His tears haven t flooded anything He hasn t caused anyone to get the plague Plaguy bill = deaths in the summer by plague were recorded in weekly lists He mocks modern society, saying all they care about it war and legal problems and his love isn t prohibiting those. Third stanza: Call s what you will, we are made such by love; Call her one, me another fly, We re tapers too, and at our own cost die, And we in us find th eagle and the dove. The phoenix riddle hath more wit By us; we two being one, are it; So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit. We die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love. Like bugs drawn to the light of a candle Flies were emblems of lustfulness Then he compares them both to a candle taper candles consume themselves Eagle and the dove: eagle is a symbol of strength, dove meekness and mercy = perfect combination Says they are the phoenix: legendary Arabian bird that died consumed by fire and rose triumphantly from the ashes

8 Love kills them, but it is through love that they are saved/resurrected Fourth stanza: We can die by it, if not live by love, And if unfit for tomb or hearse Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; And if no piece of chronicle we prove, We ll build in sonnets pretty rooms; As well a well-wrought urn becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs, And by these hymns, all shall approve Us canonized for love; Fifth stanza: And thus invoke us, You, whom reverend love Made one another s hermitage; You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage; Who did the whole world s soul contract, and drove Into the glasses of your eyes; So made such mirrors, and such spies, That they did all to you epitomize Countries, towns, courts beg from above A pattern of your love. Willingness to die for love If legend not fit for tombs and hearse then it will be fit for poetry

9 Poems will cause them to be canonized admitted into the sainthood of love Definition: the act of admitting a deceased person into the canon of saints. Their love will live on as a legend, and other lovers will look to their story Holy Sonnet 10: Holy Sonnet 14: