The Good Morrow Analysis by John Donne

After going through our post on “The Good Morrow analysis by John Donne” you’ll able to understand the theme and central idea of the poem. Followed in this analysis are ready answer on the topics, “The Good Morrow as a Love Poem”, “The Good Morrow as a Metaphysical poem”. “The Good Morrow” is a very powerful love lyric as it advocates a perfect marriage between the soul and the body for the experience of a love that is true and divine. In this poem, Donne has elevated the status of post-coital love to a level of heightened spirituality with the help of his intellect where the binarization between the physical and Platonic collapses. This link will help you with complete summary of The Good Morrow.

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The Good Morrow Analysis by John Donne

This poem begins with the befuddlement of early morning consciousness and the dawning of true love which brings to the poet’s notice the incompleteness of his past encounters with make-believe beauties – “I wonder by my troth, what thou and I did till we loved”. Before Donne had met his beloved, his idea of beauty was only physical and hence very abstract and unfulfilling. He rejects his past with passionate contempt but his disgust mellows when he realizes that the carnal took him to the spiritual. Being united with his beloved has actualized the abstract entity of his desires as she has fused his physical love with its philosophical counter-part making it divine and beautiful. In an extraordinary metaphysical conceit, this complete love is given the status of mother’s milk whereas his indulgences in country pleasures have been described as weaning to shed light upon the importance of a relationship between the body and soul – “Were we not weaned till then but suck’d on country pleasures childishly?”

The second stanza begins in the manner of an aubade – “And now good morrow to our waking souls”. Here the physical act of waking up has been compared to spiritual awakening. It must be noted that the “morrow” would not have arrived without their act of physical union in the preceding night. There is no graphical representation of sexuality instead the post coital union and coming together of two lovers after satisfying moments of love has been celebrated in this poem. This shows that the way to spiritual love is through the material fulfillment and not by dismissing the latter. The lovers in Good Morrow are not skeptical or afraid of physical love; rather they rejoice in it as it brings them closer.

The complete love defined in Good Morrow brings about unparalleled bliss in the lives of the lovers. It has the power to provide the lovers with a totality of experience which blinds them to everything around them as they are completely encapsulated in their “little room” which is an “everywhere”. This love can only be achieved when the body and the soul of the lovers have been orchestrated in a single unit. Such love has been awarded the quintessence of the fifth element by Donne.

This connection between soul and body established in Good Morrow awards immorality to the love which the poet and his beloved share. Death can only destroy their physical togetherness but their connected souls will counter and surmount the effects of death making it eternal.

Good Morrow is a celebrated piece of love poetry because it preached the concept that true love is the state when passion elevates itself to the level of divine experiences. It showed that body and soul are two faces of the same coin and they need to function as a “unified sensibility” as quoted by T.S. Eliot. Indeed it’s wonderful how Eliot concluded the poem The Good Morrow, simply the best among metaphysical poems.

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5 comments

  1. the lines are describes beatifuly but i m looking for hidden truth and meaning which are not fod yet.

  2. the lines are describes beatifuly but i m looking for hidden truth and meaning which are not found yet.

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