John Donne's "The Good-Morrow": Critical appreciation OR Substance OR Metaphysical love poem

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John Donne's The Good-Morrow: Critical appreciation OR Substance OR Metaphysical love poem


John Donne's The Good-Morrow is a Metaphysical love poem. The term 'meta' means 'beyond' and 'physical' means 'bodily'. That is to say, 'metaphysical' means 'beyond physical'. However, Dr. Samuel Johnson named this school of poets to be metaphysical because of their use of conceits that are seeming strange to the conventional world. That is to say, according to Dr. Johnson, these poets belonged out of the physical or the real world. Anyway, he termed them derogatorily. Let us now have a cursory glance at the poem The Good-Morrow.

The speaker persona in the poem, at the outset, expresses utmost astonishment thinking that their previous 'pleasures' were no love at all. They were actually immature in the game of love. That is why the speaker utters the word 'wean'd'. 'Weaning' refers to the act of making a child habituated to take solid foods rather than only milk. The two lovers were probably 'childish' till then, or they were sleepyheads like the seven Christian sleepers of Ephesus. The speaker ascertains this by saying ''Twas so'. Moreover, their love was based on vulgar and erotic country pleasures previously. Their love was not refined at all. The lover opines that the beauty he beheld was nothing but a dream, a sheer fantasy and nothing else.

However, now they are spiritually awakened from that trance. That is why the lover wishes good morning to the beloved. Now they are no more scared of losing one another. They believe in the power of true love. They think that their microcosmic world, that is, their bridal chamber, is no less than the macrocosmic world outside. The sea discoverers are exploring new lands here and there. Still, in regard to discovering the new, they are not far behind in exploring their new world of true, genuine and mutual love. They are identified and one.

In the third stanza, we come across a mirror illustration. The two lovers with two eyeballs each function as the mirrors to each other. Their faces bring out their hearts, for sure. We must note that they two are the two hemispheres of the one and same world of love. However, their world is bereft of any cold North and of any sunset. At last, in the light of our discussion, we may conclude, as per St. Thomas Aquinas' theory, that unmixed things perish, but as and when the lovers love each other equally and identically, they will stay imperishable and immortal always.

The rhyme scheme of the poem is ababccc.

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