The Good-morrow

The Good-morrow

Original Text
John Donne, Poems, by J. D. With elegies on the authors death (M. F. for J. Marriot, 1633). MICF no. 556 ROBA. Facs. edn. Menston: Scolar Press, 1969. PR 2245 A2 1633A. STC 7045.
1I wonder by my troth, what thou and I
2Did, till we lov'd? Were we not wean'd till then,
3But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly?
5'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
6If ever any beauty I did see,
7Which I desir'd, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.
8And now good morrow to our waking souls,
9Which watch not one another out of fear;
10For love, all love of other sights controls,
11And makes one little room, an everywhere.
12Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
14Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
15My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
16And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
17Where can we find two better hemispheres,
18Without sharp north, without declining west?
20If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
21Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

Notes

4] the seven sleepers' den. According to a popular legend, seven young Christians of Ephesus, in the second century, took refuge from Roman persecution in a cave, and miraculously slept for some two hundred years when the entrance of their cave was walled up by their pursuers. Back to Line
13] other. Some MSS. read "others," but "other" is an old plural form. Back to Line
19] The scholastic doctrine is that what is simple (that is, one, or though two, always alike, not a compound) cannot be dissolved or die; ''equally" means qualitatively the same. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1633
RPO poem Editors
N. J. Endicott
RPO Edition
3RP 1.165.
Rhyme