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  • Essay / Analysis of a poem "The Good Tomorrow" by John Donne

    When analyzing a work of John Donne, it is important to remember that Donne was arguably one of the most influential poets of his time. It is imperative that readers are aware that Donne's use of complex metaphors and images was revolutionary and that it takes a great deal of attention to detail to put the pieces of his poems together. This is particularly the case in his poem “The Good-Morrow”. In this poem, the speaker explains to his lover the nature of their relationship. The speaker uses the first half of the poem to lay the groundwork for the long, detailed image in the second half of the poem, at which point he uses a globe as a representation of the love they both share. Geographic imagery in this context emphasizes the duality of human nature in the unity of romantic love. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Specifically, the images show that the unity between the lovers in the poem is both physical and spiritual. The first stanza of the poem introduces the physical aspect of the love shared between the speaker and his beloved. The speaker said to his beloved: “Have we not been weaned thus far? / But sucked up to country pleasures, childishly? »[1] It is with these two rhetorical questions presented by the speaker that the necessity of the physical body in their love is established. The speaker then confirms that the answer to both questions is yes. What the speaker is implying is that before forming their loving unity, they only sought physical love, and more specifically sexual love, because that was all they knew. The lines also suggest that the two have previously performed acts of physical love towards each other using sexual innuendo such as "sucking for the pleasures of the country". In the conclusion of the first stanza, the speaker says, "If ever I saw beauty, / That I desired and obtained, it was but a dream of thee." »[2] The stanza ends with the image of sleep, which is a physical act or state of being. The object of the speaker's sleep or the id to dream, and more particularly to dream of his lover. What the speaker is saying in these lines is that anyone he met or had sex with before her was not a true unit and therefore only served as a means to lead him towards She. The implication of this statement by the speaker is that it is the physical characteristics of human nature, whether immature sexual relations or the fact that he was "asleep" before meeting her, that makes him led to his beloved. The spiritual aspect of the unity of lovers is briefly addressed at the end of the first stanza before being explored in more depth in the second stanza. I had previously discussed the last two lines of the first stanza where Donne provides images of dreams, which are a consequence of sleep. While the act of sleeping can be considered something physical, the act of dreaming has more of a spiritual insinuation. Speaking means that while the physical part of the body is asleep (presumably after indulging in sexual pleasures), the speaker's mind longs for a connection with the lover. In the first line of the second stanza, the speaker says, “And now, hello to our waking souls, / Who look not at each other in fear; / For love, all love of other views controls, / And makes a small room an everywhere. »[3] The speaker begins by implying that he no longer dreams of his beloved, for now they are awake and their souls are joined. In this case, the lovers' spiritual connection is represented by their souls. After havingintroduces the spiritual element with souls, the speaker then highlights the difference between physical and spiritual love. In the first stanza we see that physical love results in an experience of pleasure followed by sleep. However, when two souls are united in love, there is no more fear and the outside world no longer matters to them. The room they're both in (in this case, the room they woke up in) is the only world that matters because it's where their souls are joined. Saying that once their souls are connected, they are free from fear and the rest of the world becomes obsolete, the speaker places great importance on the spiritual nature of their relationship in the unity of lovers. After describing the importance of the physical nature of lovers and the spiritual nature of lovers, the speaker then goes on to explain how these two ideas are linked in the final part of the poem. At the beginning of the third stanza, the speaker says that "My face in your eyes, yours in mine appears, / And true simple hearts lie in the faces." » [4] In these lines, the speaker brings together the physical and the spiritual by saying that their faces are reflected in the eye of the other, which is the window of their soul where they can see the heart of the other. GR Wilson, Jr. says, in reference to lines 15 and 16, that "Each lover has two manifestations – himself and the self reflected in the eyes of the other lover – and each therefore has both a physical existence and an ideal existence, or shadow. “[5] Wilson does an excellent job representing the dichotomy of Donne's picture, but I disagree with the way he concludes his statement. Although I agree that the manifestation of the speaker himself represents the physical side of the image, I would argue that the reflection of the speaker in his lover's eye is meant to represent a spiritual side of the image. I believe this represents a spiritual side of the image because it seems to be directly related to the previous line in which the speaker says, "Let us have a world, everyone has one and is one." » [6] Here the speaker is saying that each of them is a world that the other can explore and that together they are one world. This single world references previous lines in which the speaker discusses the conception of a will resulting from the union of their two souls. Therefore, when the speaker and his beloved look into each other's eyes, they explore the world described in the second stanza, which is composed of the bodies and souls of the lovers and therefore has both physical and spiritual components . Going further, Wilson cites the work of Arnold Stein, saying: "In his elaborate explanation of this poem, Stein points out that 'where the lover sees directly his own reflected face, while he sees directly the other face, but only feels its image reflected in his own eye, there exists the most delicate point of contrast between the subjective and the objective. »[7] What Stein seems to be suggesting is that the image of the lover reflected in the speaker's eye is not something he could ever perceive. So how would he know the image is there? While the idea that he can see his lover represents his physical manifestation, the reflection of his lover in his own eyes seems to take on its spiritual manifestation because although he cannot see his reflection, he knows it is there thanks to their connected souls. . At the end of the last stanza, the speaker brings up another example that involves the connectivity of the physical and the spiritual. The speaker says, “Not everything that dies is mixed equally; / If our two loves become one, or you and I / Love so much that no one slows down, no one can die. »[8] Here, the speaker explains that for a love to be eternal, the..