The Good Morrow

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Discuss John Donne’s “The Good Morrow” as a metaphysical poem.

A metaphysical poem is a kind of poem whose sense of appeal to the


imagination transcends the physical world; exploring a kind of spiritual world to
present the truth about the subject matter in a way that, one would say, might
have not been reasoned before. Such is the ingenuity of John Donne’s
passionate appeal in “The Good Morrow“. The poem is predicated on love; it is
surgical on the poet-persona’s heartfelt, and intelligent proposal to his lover
who, by the virtue of some sociopolitical constraint of the era, must be
convinced of the chemistry beyond reasonable doubts. This essay, thus
underpinned, aims to set the discourse in the poem to the genre, considering its
salient elements of the metaphysical poetry.

For one, the poet employs the element, unified sensibilities. It takes a
homologous structure approach in relating two dissimilar entities: a fusion of
passionate feeling and logical argument. This lifts the emotional sense of the
poem into mental depth as seen in the extended metaphors, “two better
hemispheres” (line 3, stanza 3), “maps”. This kind of poem presents a fresh
outlook on love as a matter of reasoning, as Shakespeare says in A Midsummer
Night’s Dream , “Love looks not with the eye, but with the mind”. Creating
something new on the subject, John Donne does not conform to the tradition of
likening the lover to romantic elements inherent in nature in order that he
grounds the eternity of such a feeling; but he uses intellectual analogies that
are not to be found anywhere in the natural world. The allusion, “seven
sleepers’ den”, metaphors, “map”, “little room… everywhere”, “two…
hemispheres”, and ultimately, the epigram, “whatever dies was not mixed
equally” are all oriented toward the overlapping effect of intellectuality on
emotions, although both make a sensible merger that Iiidispels the illusion of
one not being an existential determinant of love.

Secondly, metaphysical poetry is dramatic in manner and direct in tone. The


poem is almost a monologue as we garner that the poet-persona passionately
addresses his lover throughout the poem. The poem takes the mode of a singly
undertaken straight talk on the subject bringing up a fancy memory idealised in
the poet-persona’s imagination of a reality, “I wonder by my troth, what thou
and I/Did, till we loved?” (lines 1-2, stanza 1). In stanza 2, the poet gets on
with the subject he earnestly seeks to relate as a matter of urgency (telling
from the straight-to-the-point flow of thought, and brevity); and clarity. Again,
as a matter of truth. In light of this, the discussion goes intellectual and
complex as is the preserve of metaphysical poetry. Following through, a surgical
sublimity is achieved by subsuming the implicit limitations as well as the
idealised spurning under the complex rendition of the dissimilar; metaphysical
world of truth which evades the vanity of reasonable doubts. And persuading
the lover to see in that light, the poem becomes a bobbling up truth from the
Imagination of the poet who diplomatically seizes the temporal and
environmental monopoly of thought to win the lady’s reasoning over to the
possibility that lies ahead “If our two loves be one, or, thou and I/Love so alike,
that none do slacken, nor can die”.

Thirdly, the poem is apt on metaphysical conceit. In essence, what is conceited


in the poem is both intrinsic and extrinsic. For the former, the poet-persona is
not outspoken on his proposal perhaps from chivalry, or being courteous and to
want to discuss the subject in a way that deviates from the traditional circus.
For the latter, the poem, by extension, is a reflection of the whooping schism
and division that existed among the English people of the seventeenth century
on the grounds of humanism. At that time, papacy was very much rebuffed and
protestantism fought for recognition, creating the division of the Christians into
Catholics and Protestants through a cold blood war. There was also conflicting
political ideals as the Protestants became frondeurs of the raison d’état.
Technically and apparently, romantic chemistry was impossible among the two
poor classes. This was the background phenome

non that birthed the poem. And this is why John Donne adopts this kind of
stylised love piece to cross the boundary set by the construct of the time, highly
imagining a world of possibility different from the imbroglio they both have
found themselves on the aforementioned note.

To cap it all, that John Donne’s “The Good Morrow” is a metaphysical poem is a
far reaching substance of indubitability. From the salience of the elements
employed in presenting the age long subject of love, we see that the poem
combines passion and logic to express love in a way that rather taxes reasoning
and imagination than merely appealing to it. The quality of the poem is enforced
by the beyond-the-physical kind of recreating a spectacle of sensational (mostly
visual) elements to appeal for the classlessness of love – and the eternity of its
genuineness at that.

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