The poem “The Good Morrow” is among the best metaphysical love poems produced by John Donne. The poem begins with a question to the two lovers, the poet and his beloved; Donne asks “what did you and me do until we fell in love?” The question is significant and does not need an answer because it clearly indicates that life before falling in love was nothing more than “country pleasures” like that of a child who suckles on her mother’s breast to survive. The child, suckling at the mother’s breast, is never aware of the world around it.

The poet goes on to compare himself and his beloved using an exaggerated and conceited metaphor from “The Den of the Seven Sleepers” to express that his whole life was nothing more than an unconscious life. If they had enjoyed any kind of pleasure and experienced joy, that would be nothing more than imagination. The poet opens his heart in praise of his beloved as:

“If ever I saw any beauty;
What I wished for and got was nothing more than a dream of yours.”

The poet says good morning to his and his beloved’s “waking souls” because their past life, before they met, was all shadow and darkness of sleep. It is now, after meeting his beloved, that the poet feels his soul awake. The poet believes that a little love can turn even a small room into a whole world.

The poet wishes to ignore the world around him because he wants to focus only on his beloved. Therefore, the discoverers of the sea can discover new worlds, maps can be spread, but the poet must “own a world” of the unity of the union of lovers. Donne creates a beautiful equation here, that is, a lover equals a loved one and the beloved equals a lover. In other words, Donne’s math would show the result of:

1 lover + 1 beloved = 1 love

Prayed

1+1= 1

This is the equation that leads to the fusion of the being of the lovers in unity:

“My face in your eye, your face in mine appears.”

The poet even goes so far as to declare the two lovers “two better hemispheres.”

John Donne has convinced us of the magical charms of love and the feats of lovers that have the power to transform normal beings and random acts into evergreen stories; here the story is of a lover and beloved who have formed the unity of being through pure love that is beyond the physical.

Read more by this author at: http://www.risenotes.com