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John Donne's "The Good-Morrow" · The Daily Poem

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, August 10th, 2026.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is by John Donne.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's called The Good Morrow.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and read it one more time.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: The Good Morrow
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I did till we loved.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Were we not weaned till then?
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: But sucked on country pleasures childishly,
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den,
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: T'was so,
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: but this all pleasures fancies be,
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: If ever any beauty I did see which I desired and got, T'was but a dream of thee.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And now good morrow to our waking souls,
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Which watch not one another out of fear,
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: For love all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room an everywhere.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: let maps to other worlds on worlds have shown,
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: let us possess one world, each hath one and is one.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, and true plain hearts do in the faces rest.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Where can we find two better hemispheres, without sharp north, without declining west?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever dies was not mixed equally.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: If our two loves be one, or thou and I love so alike that none do slacken, none can die.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Dunn's love poetry is the perfect poetry for a young man to use in the wooing of
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: a young woman, I think, because...
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: It automatically winnows its audience.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: It requires a clever hearer or reader to fully appreciate it and certainly
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: to fully parse the images and allusions that he's making.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if you give Dunn's love poetry or you read Dunn's love poetry to your beloved
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: and she gets it, then you know you've got a good one.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: The opening stanza includes an allusion to The Seven Sleepers,
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: These saints who flee persecution,
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Roman imperial persecution and take refuge in a cave only to have
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: the emperor wall them up inside that cave as a retribution only to be discovered
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: and resurrected centuries later.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: They awaken,
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: not immediately understanding what has happened,
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: but hungry,
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: they send one of their party to the marketplace to buy food,
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: and he turns up with odd coins in his pockets that are no longer the coins of
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: the realm.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: In fact...
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: The people in the city believe that he has stumbled upon a hidden treasure somewhere
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: because he has these now very old coins in his possession.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Dunn invokes the seven sleepers as an image of the souls of these two lovers.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: What were they doing before they found one another, before they loved one another?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Just sleeping, lying dormant, waiting for a resurrection with an air of the miraculous about it.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And now the second stanza begins,
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: good morrow to our waking souls,
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: good morning to the souls that are awakening to one another and with and
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: through one another.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then he describes the two lovers as...
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then he closes in the final lines of the third stanza with this allusion to
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: The late antique Greek physician Galen,
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: who theorized that biological death resulted from an imbalance of fluids
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: or substances within the living body.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And thus,
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: says Dunn's speaker,
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: if we two can love each other in equal measure,
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: in fact,
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: if our two loves can become one love,
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: so as not even to admit the possibility of imbalance, then our love cannot die.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps we cannot die.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: The ambiguity there, I think, is a purposeful one.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: We, ourselves,
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: and our love,
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: they're indistinguishable from one another, at least if we're doing it right.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the poem one more time.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I did till we loved.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Were we not weaned till then, but sucked on country pleasures childishly?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Twas so, but this all pleasure's fancies be.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: If ever any beauty I did see which I desired and got, Twas but a dream of thee.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And now good morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: For love, all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room in everywhere.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let sea discoverers to new worlds have gone,
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Let maps to other worlds on worlds have shone,
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let us possess one world, each hath one and is one.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, and true plain hearts do in the faces rest.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Where can we find two better hemispheres, without sharp north, without declining west?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever dies was not mixed equally.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: If our two loves be one, or thou and I love so alike that none do slacken, None can die.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: This has been The Daily Poem.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back tomorrow with another subscriber episode and then here on
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: the main channel on Wednesday.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: In the meantime,
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: find us at dailypoempod.substack.com to listen to past episodes of The Daily Poem,
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: including others featuring John Donne's sometimes elaborate love poetry.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: You can also share poems from there.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: You can leave your own comments and you can subscribe and support the show.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: For all of us at Goldberry Studios, I'm Sean Johnson wishing you happy reading.