THE GOOD MORROW

BY JOHN DONNE'S

Subject: Literature-in-English

Theme: Novel

Topic: The Good Morrow

Sub Topic:

Date: dd/mm/yyyy

Class: S.S 3

Average Age: 13 years and above

Duration: 35 Minutes

No of Learners: 40



Background of the Poet

John Donne was born into a family of Roman Catholics on the 22nd, January 1957. The period of his birth was a time when Catholics were faced with persecution in England.
His father from Wales, and an ironmonger {one who sells equipment and tools for use in homes and gardens} and his mother Elizabeth Heywood from a family that is deeply into religion with relatives as reverends, priests and martyrs. His brother was sent to prison where he died for Sheltering a recusant.
For refusing to deny his faith, he also had a share of the persecution as his certificates from the college and university were withheld. At the age of twenty-five, he converted to Anglicanism and took to writing Poetry and anti-Catholic tracts.
He fell in love with and secretly married Anne Moore. Although their marriage was one of love, John Donne encountered financial challenges. His wife happened to be his source of inspiration in his live poems until her death. Her death eventually affected the content of his poem as he took to focusing more on mortality, theology and sublime in his poetry. At age fifty nine as a result of his declining health, he died in the 31st March 1631.

The Poem’s background:

The Good Morrow is one of John Donne’s first poems, Given that it was written while he was still a student at Lincoln’s Inn {a thriving society of barrister} where he occupied himself studying history, theology, and poetry. That was a period he also started writing Poetry. The poem was written at a time when England was undergoing Literary, political, social and intellectual transformation under the rule of Queen Elizabeth 1.
There was relative peace and the springing up of a prosperous middle class in England, increased trade, evolution of the arts and literature, increased wealth, exploration to the Americas, increased sea travels and this brought about a delightful atmosphere that provided calmness of mind for the people. As such, Jon Donne’s experiences as an active observer of the different events shaping England and the whole of Europe served as the creative idea for his poem.

Setting of the poem:

The physical place is England and the time setting of the poem is the sixteenth and seventeenth century which saw England at it’s peak as the military and political powerhouse. It was a period that England suffered Sociopolitical and religious crisis, faced natural and unnatural disasters as well as an era that saw England undergo various transformation under the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1.
The dominant theme in the poetry of that era was the theme of Love—Unreciprocated love. Thus, in this Poetry of John Donne’s, there is the idea of “Carpe diem” to make the most of the, to seize the day, and only trusting in the future as little as possible. What this means is that because there were various happenings in England and too many people were dying, it was important for those who were alive, to “seize the day, and enjoy every moment as it comes.

Subject matter of the poem:

The good morrow is a conversational poem in style though the listener {the poetic persona’s loved one} is silent and an example of a dramatic monologue.
It focuses on the issue of love and “seizing the moment”, as our poetic persona makes us understand the joy of love when it is total and complete. In the poem, the speaker talking to his lover after a blissful night spent together, constantly compares his present to his past. In their moment of togetherness they are free from the commotion of the world such that their love wraps them up in a web that nothing outside their romantic universe matters again.
According to our poetic persona, the love that exists between him and his loved one is so true and pure that it is immortal, undying and unchanging. For him, his past without his lover beside him were unproductive, wasted years.
Therefor it is in seizing the moment and becoming united with his lover emotionally, spiritually, physically that he is able to find unquantified and immeasurable happiness and fulfilment.
Summarily, the poem begins the poetic persona talking to himself. But before then, he happens to be in a state of indecision, not sure of what to do to take the romantic relationship between him and his lover to the next level, it is at this point that the idea of Carpe diem begins when the poetic persona decides to present the reasons why they should take their relationship to a higher level.
Thus, in “seizing the moment”, the poetic persona speaks of and explores the joy of total love within the scope of a relationship stating that the love that exists between him and his lover is so true and pure such that it is undying, unchanging and immortal and wraps them in a web that allows them live in a world of their own and nothing else outside their romantic universe matters.
He concludes by stating that whatever pleasures they experienced before meeting each other were simply dull imitations of the joy they now enjoy with each other. He also admits that all the beauties he met before his lover were nothing were nothing but insignificant when compared with the beauty of his real lover. Thus, according to the poem, the poetic persona would have experienced a great loss if he had not seized the moment and gone into a romantic relationship with his lover.

THEMES IN THE POEM:

John Donne’s poem has a number of fundamental ideas/messages/that cuts across the poem which includes:

The enduring power of true love:

According to the idea in theme, “true love never dies” as expressed in the poem. True love often stands the test of time while other kinds of love may be temporary. The poetic persona in the third stanza says “my face in thine, thine in mine appears/ and true plain eyes do in the faces rest. Their love for each other shows in their eyes. Thus, what they feel for each other is not just in hearts but also in their souls and it is their eyes that reflects this.
Again, the poetic persona from his knowledge of the universe refers to himself and his loved one as “two hemispheres” meaning that their love has led to a complete union of two souls and in turn, it will never die. It will never die because their love is not a mere union of bodies, it is a union of souls. Thus it is perfect and spiritual.

Growth and Maturity:

The poetic persona at the beginning of the poem compared the life of him and his lover to that of childhood and innocence before they met and began a romantic relationship. He mentions words like child, weaned, sucked on country’s pleasure. And by the second and third stanza, him and his loved one have moved from the realm of innocence that childhood represents to a phase of experience that marks adulthood. As such there is a sudden dramatic movement in the poem from childishness to maturity and “childhood’ to adulthood”, from “pleasures and fancies” to “true love”, from dream to reality, and from “sleep to awakening”.
By the end of the poem, all these movement and growth helps the poetic persona and his lover to be lifted from ignorance to awareness.

Life’s emptiness without true love:

This theme talks about the poetic persona’s reflection on the barrenness of his life before he met his lover. As seen in the first stanza “I wonder by my troth what thou and I/Did I’ll we loved. We’re we not weaned”… According to him, all those pleasures that they both enjoyed before they met, he considers them all as unimportant when compared to the beautiful moments they now share together in their union. Further our speaker implies or suggests that the lives himself and his loved one lived before meeting was dull and uninteresting and can be compared to the Seven sleepers of Ephesus {they are a group of youths who took refuge in a cave to escape religious persecution and came out two hundred years later}. Thus even they were alive, they only simply existed and were not living! Again, the idea presented in the line “if ever any beauty I did see/ which I desired and got, ‘Twas but a dream of thee” implies that despite having seen other beautiful woman, none of such beauties can be compared to that of his loved one.

The beauty and strength of love:

To different people, the concept of “love” means different things. For some while love is wicked, it is to others it is beautiful... Intoxicating to some, real and clear to others. But regarding what love is in the case of this poem, love is pure and eternal, an experience that is extremely delicate and blissful.
It is a type of love which when the poetic persona and his lover enters, it envelops them that nothing else outside their romantic universe matters and Stanza one shows us how the poetic persona wonders aloud what he and his loved one had been doing before they love. He compares the past lives of himself and his lover to an “act of sleeping”; in other words an unproductive life. The poetic persona concludes eventually towards the end of the poem that love is more powerful than death as he likens it to immortality, and resurrection.

The futility and vanity of life:

Haven emphasized the power of true love, this same poem ironically also outlines the vanity of life.
According to our poetic persona, any moment a person spends outside love is a waste of time and resources as seen in line 10-13; thus happiness and joy is a major part of his relationship with his lover.
He believes that discovering new parts of the world is a waste of time that offers nothing when compared to the bliss he the {poetic persona} has found himself. To him, sea discoverers and explorers can go out to sea to discover all they want, but in the little world where he exists with his loved one, he finds so much happiness.

STYLES IN THE POEM:

There are a number of writing techniques employed by the writer in this poem. They are as follows:

Hyperbole:

This is a deliberate exaggeration used in a statement. It can also be referred to as an overstatement. The poet makes use of this device to emphasize strongly the unique type of true love that exists between the poetic persona and his lover. Lines 1-2 captures this. Afterwards, he begins the process of analyzing the love him and his loved one share in exaggerated terms. His wondering aloud what they did with their lives comparing their past with their present and past lives and concluding that the present is more fulfilling and productive. He also goes ahead to emphasize on the beauty of his loved one as seen in the first stanza, “if ever any beauty I did see/which I desired, ‘twas but a dream of thee”.

Language:

The poet adopts the style of conversation in the poem. There’s a speaker addressing his lover who happens to be the listener that doesn’t seem to respond; thus making it a dramatic monologue {a one- sided conversation}.
However because of the poet’s conversational approach, the reader is made to feel that he or she is the one being addressed. It should be noted that there’s no reference to a particular gender in the poem so the speaker may be a woman while the listener, a man; or Vice versa. The use of Caesura in the poem {a pause or interruption in the poem} further strengthens the conversational approach.

Imagery:

There are a number of words used in the poem that creates mental pictures to the readers. The poet through his choice of words wants the readers to visualize the images in the poem for them to see a reflection of themselves in the poem.
Some of the lines in the poem that portrays imagery are: “my face in thine eye, thou in mine appears” {Line 15}, “if ever any beauty I did see” {Line 6}, “…but a dream of the” {Line7} etc..

Diction:

Generally, at the beginning of the poem, the words used are mild, soft and filled with hyperbole but still considered normal and understandable to the reader. By the second stanza, the words become a bit complex with the use of philosophical words like: “worlds on worlds”, “all other sights controls”, “waking souls” etc.; the third stanza, it becomes even more hard with the fusion of spiritual and physical meaning of words in the poem.
The words used in the poem represents the time setting of the poem which is the seventeenth century; words like ‘twas, troth, thine, thou. He also made use of words that gave a broader meaning of his metaphors; metaphors like: sea discoverers {travel and explorers}, {child care}, declining west {astronomy/physical universe}, sleepers den {history}, etc.

Other styles includes: Repetition, Metaphor, Rhetorical question, Allusion.




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