Page 172 - DENG201_ENGLISH_II

English - II

Notes not difficult for a 17th-century man to think that a person can assume the proportions of a whole
world. Love makes the lover’s attention focus on a part of that great whole. The part is named with
the name of the whole (metonymy).
- Metaphors are fairly frequent:
Implicit metaphor in lines 2-3 “Were we not wean’d till then? But suck’d on country pleasures,
childishly?” The state of the lovers prior to their falling in love with each other is identified with
childhood. The explicit metaphor would be “we were babies before we loved”.
There is another implicit metaphor in line 4. It runs much in the same way as the other: “Or snorted we
in the Seven Sleepers’ den?”
This time, the previous state of both lovers is identified with sleep. Explicitly: “We were asleep before
we loved”.
Line 5: “But this, all pleasures fancies be”.
Line 6-7: “. . . any beauty I did see . . .was but a dream of thee”.
This metaphor is the direct consequence of the one in line 4: if the lover was asleep, it is altogether
fitting that anything he saw should be a dream. It is easy to see how these metaphors enhance the
contents of the poem.
Line 8: “And now good-morrow to our waking souls”.
This is but another extension of the metaphors in lines 3 and 7. We have already seen that the first
stanza deals with the past, and that the metaphors were those of unconsciousness (childhood and
sleep). The second stanza deals with the present, with the lovers having discovered one another, and,
accordingly, this is dealt with with a metaphor of waking in the first line of the stanza. “The “good-
morrow” with which Donne addresses the two lovers could be interpreted as a metaphor of the
whole of thie poem, if we suppose the latter to be autobiographical and as sincere as as it seems to be;
the “good-morrow” in the poem is the lover’s rejoicing because of the love he and his lady have
found in each other; “The Good-Morrow” (the poem) amouts to very much the same in real life. The
title would be fully justified.
Line 11: “Love . . . makes one little room an everywhere”.
This is in the same line as the metonymy “lover = world”. The outer world is discarded and the little
room becomes an “everywhere”.
Line 16: “And true plain hearts do in the faces rest”.
Sincerity is depicted as a heart “resting” on a face: no secret intentions for the lovers; their faces show
their hearts. They are externally and internally just as true to one another.
Lines 17-18: “Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?”
The lovers were called “worlds” in line 14. Now the idea is rounded off; they are not worlds, they are
“hemispheres”. This adds three notions to the previous idea. First, the lovers aren’t complete by
themselves, they need each other. A hemisphere is a perfect metaphor for any incomplete thing. Second,
once the lovers are together, they form not only a complete body, but a whole world (the word
“hemisphere” suggests half of the world). Third, the being they form when they are together is
perfect: perfection has been associated with the spheric shape since Greek times (Democritus,
Parmenides). So the world they form will have no imperfections, no sharp north or declining west.
“Sharp” may stand for quarrels between the lovers, and “declining” for the gradual decay of love
because of time. This last metaphor opens the way for the final conceit, which states the idea in a
bolder way: immortal love makes the lovers immortal.
This last metaphor is an implicit one. It is quite complicated, for it takes Donne three lines to develop it:
Whatever dies, was not mix’d equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die.

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