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Unit 10: Poetry : John Donne’s “The Good Morrow”

Figure of Speech Notes
We are going to examine in the first place those figures of speech that contribute to enhance musicality,
not sense; those that could be appreciated on hearing the poem even by a person with no knowledge
of English. Of course, the main of these are the metrical scheme and the rhyme, but these are taken
almost for granted in a poem of the seventeenth century, and deserve a separate section.
- Alliteration is a device frequently used by Donne. There are several instances in our poem:
Line 2: “. . . Were we not wean’d till then?”
Line 4: “Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?”
Here alliteration has an onomatopoeic character; alliteration in - s appears in two words related to
sleep, “snorted” and “sleepers”, helping thus to underline the sense.
- Anaphora in lines 12, 13 and 14; “Let sea-discoverers . . . Let maps . . . let us . . . “
- Epanadiplosis in line 1 (though perhaps a chance one):
“I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I . . . “
Reduplication (present too in several other instances):
Line 10: “For love all love of other sights controls”
Line 13: “Let maps to others, worlds on worlds have shown”
The word “world” or “worlds” is also present in lines 12 and 14, but the effect is not so conspicuous.
Line 14: “Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one”
Line 15: “My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears”
(1) (2)
It is of no consequence that (1) is an adjective while (2) is a pronoun; the effect is the saqme
as far as the ear is concerned.
Line 18: “Without sharp north, without declining west”
Line 21: “. . . love so alike that none do slacken, none can die”
Now for the figures of speech which add to the sense: it is in these that Donne’s imagination ran more
freely:
- Rhetorical interrogative - The first four lines are a series of these:
- “I wonder . . .what thou and I / Did, till we lov’d?”
Were we not wean’d till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?”
- Exclamation: Line 1: “by my troth”
- Invocation: In line 8, the poet addresses himself to his soul and his lover’s, and wishes them a “good-
morrow”. In fact, the whole of the poem is a sort of invocation; the poet is speaking to his lady, who
doesn’t intervene.
- Metonymy: Line 6: “If ever any beauty I did see”
Beauty = beautiful woman. In fact, this is everyday speech. The same occurs in lines 8 (souls = minds,
people) and 16 (heart=mind, especially if in love). A far more interesing metonymy is developed in
line 14:
“Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one”.
So, each lover is a world for the other. If I consider this a metonymy rather than a metaphor, it is
because of Donne’s cultural background. At that time it was widely held - it was the traditional belief
- that man was a “microcosm”: everything was ordered in the “macrocosm” or universe just as it was
in man; fluids governed the body just as elements governed the macrocosm; man’s destiny was
already fixed in the stars. Knowledge of the world was knowledge of man, and vice-versa. So it was

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