The Good-Morrow
John Donne
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
“The Good Morrow” is an aubade—a morning love poem—written by the English poet John Donne, likely in the 1590s. In it, the speaker describes love as a profound experience that's almost like a religious epiphany. Indeed, the poem claims that erotic love can produce the same effects that religion can. Through love, the speaker’s soul awakens; because of love, the speaker abandons the outside world; in love, the speaker finds immortality. This is a potentially subversive argument, for two reasons. First, because the poem suggests that all love—even love outside of marriage—might have this transformative, enlightening effect. Second, because of the idea that romantic love can mirror the joys and revelations of religious devotion.
Summary
What did you and I even do before we were in love? Were we still breastfeeding? Did we only enjoy simple, childish things? Or were we fast asleep with the Seven Sleepers? It’s true. But all of this is just pleasure’s dream. If I ever wanted and gained something beautiful, it was just a dream of you.
And now good morning to our souls, which are waking up. They do not watch each other out of fear. There’s no need for jealousy; love makes it so that we don’t need to look at anything except each other. And it makes one small room as wide as the world. Let explorers cross the ocean to discover new worlds. Let other people make maps, charting worlds upon worlds. Let us have just one world: each of us is a world, and so each of us has a world.
My face appears in your eye and your face appears in my eye. And the truth of our hearts is visible in our faces. Where can we find two better globes, without the cold of the north or the darkness that comes when the sun sets in the west? When something dies, it dies because its parts were not appropriately mixed. But our loves are so perfectly matched that we have become one, and thus our love will not lose its power, and we will not die.
Themes
Love as an Awakening
“The Good Morrow” is a celebration of love, which it presents as an intense and unparalleled pleasure. All the joys that the two lovers experienced before they found each other pale in comparison to the joy they experience together. Indeed, love is so powerful that the speaker describes it as an awakening of the soul: it is almost a religious experience. And like a religious experience, it reshapes the lovers’ attitude to the world at large. Like monks or nuns who dedicate themselves to religious practice, the two lovers dedicate themselves to love above adventure and career success. “The Good Morrow” thus translates romantic—and erotic—love into a religious, even holy, experience. Love itself, the speaker suggests, is capable of producing the same insights as religion.
“The Good Morrow” separates the lives of the lovers into two parts: before they found each other, and after. The speaker describes the first part of their lives with disdain: the pleasures they enjoyed were “childish.” Indeed, they were not even “weaned”: they were like babies. Like children, they had a limited understanding of life. They were aware of only some of its “country” (or lowly) pleasures, going through the motions of life without knowing there could be something more.
But once they find each other, it feels as though their eyes have been opened. The speaker realizes that any “beauty” experienced before this love was really nothing more than a “dream”—a pale imitation—of the joy and pleasure the speaker has now. “Good-morrow to our waking souls,” the speaker announces at the start of stanza 2, as though the lovers had been asleep and are just now glimpsing the light of day for the first time.
Since the sun is often associated with Jesus Christ in Christian religious traditions and light is often associated with enlightenment, the speaker’s description of this experience is implicitly cast in religious terms. That is, the speaker makes waking up alongside a lover sound like a religious epiphany or a conversion experience. The consequences of this epiphany are also implicitly religious. Having tasted the intense pleasures of love, the lovers give up on adventure and exploration: instead they treat their “one little room” as “an everywhere.” In this way, they become like monks or nuns: people who separate themselves from the world to dedicate themselves to their faith.
Further, the lovers' devotion to each other wins them immortality: “none can die,” the speaker announces in the poem’s final line. Immortality is more commonly taken to be the reward for dedicated religious faith, not earthly pleasures like romantic love. In describing this relationship in religious terms, the speaker breaks down the traditional distinctions between love and religion. Where many religious traditions treat erotic love as something potentially harmful to religious devotion, the speaker of “The Good Morrow” suggests that erotic love leads to the same devotion, insight, and immortality that religion promises.
However, the speaker doesn’t specify the nature of the love in question. If the lovers are married, for instance, the reader doesn’t hear anything about it. Instead, the speaker focuses on the perfection of their love, noting the way the two lovers complement each other. Unlike other poems that argue for the holiness of married love specifically (like Anne Bradstreet’s “To My Dear and Loving Husband”), “The Good Morrow” holds out an even more subversive possibility: that all love is capable of producing religious epiphany, whether or not it takes a form that the Church sanctions, like marriage.
Theme Exploration and Adventure
Exploration and Adventure
“The Good Morrow” was written during the Age of Discovery, the period of intense European sea exploration lasting roughly from the 15th to 17th centuries. This context informs the poem's second and third stanzas, with their focus on "sea-discoverers," "new worlds," "maps," and "hemispheres." The poem compares the desire to chart new lands with the pleasures of love itself, and finds the latter to be more powerful and exciting. Indeed, the speaker finds love so pleasurable that he or she proposes to withdraw from the world in order to dedicate him or herself entirely to that love. Instead of seeking adventure, the speaker proposes that the lovers “make one little room an everywhere.” For the speaker, then, love creates its own world to explore.
Note how, in the poem’s second stanza, the speaker proposes that the lovers renounce their worldly ambitions. The speaker says that instead of crossing the oceans or mapping foreign countries, they should stay in bed and gaze into each other's eyes. Indeed, the speaker argues in stanza 3, they will not find better "hemispheres" out in the world than each others' eyes. This means that, for the speaker, giving up the outside world is not a sacrifice. Indeed, the speaker finds a better world in bed with this lover.
Importantly, however, this "lovers' world" is not totally separate from the wider world. Instead, it recreates it in miniature, essentially resulting in a microcosm that reproduces the entire world itself within the lovers' relationship. The poem thus argues that true love can be a way of experiencing the entirety of existence. Essentially, there's no need to, say, seek adventure on the high seas, because everything is already contained within the experience of love itself.
좋은 아침
그대와 나 무엇을 했는지 도대체 나는 궁금하오,
우리가 사랑하기까지. 그때까지 젖도 떼지 못한 채
유치하게 촌스러운 쾌락만을 빨고 있었단 말이오?
아니면 일곱 잠보들의 동굴에서 코골고 있었던가요?
그랬다오. 우리 사랑 이외의 온갖 쾌락은 그저 헛것일 뿐.
이제껏 내가 만나서 원하고 취했던 미녀가 있다면
그것은 단지 그대의 환영이었을 뿐이었다오.
이제 깨어나는 우리 두 영혼에게 아침인사를,
서로를 두려움으로 바라보지 않는 두 영혼에게.
우리의 사랑이 다른 모습에 대한 모든 사랑을 막아주고
이 작은 공간을 온 세상이 되게 하여 주니.
대양의 발견자들은 신세계로 가게 두고,
지도들이 다른 이들에게 이 세상 저 세상 보여주게 두고,
우리는 하나의 세상만을 소유합니다, 서로 하나씩 지니고 하나 된 세상을.
내 얼굴은 그대 눈동자에, 그대 얼굴은 내 눈동자 비치고,
진실하고 순수한 마음이 두 얼굴에 깃들어 있소.
어디에서 이보다 더 나은 반구들을 찾을 수 있겠소?
살을 에는 듯한 추운 북반구도, 해지는 서쪽도 없는 반구를.
소멸하는 것은 무엇이건 균일하게 결합되지 못한 것.
우리 두 사랑이 하나이거나 혹은 그대와 내가
똑같이 사랑하여 어느 한쪽도 느슨해 지지 않는다면, 누구도 죽지 않으리.
저녁에 연인 창가에서 부르는 사랑의 노래를 세레나데(serenade / 이탈리아어 세레나타 serenata에서 유래)라고 한다. 음악에서는 소야곡이라 한다. 반면에 아침에 부르는 사랑의 노래는 오바드(aubade)라고 한다. 이 시는 오바드이다.
이 시는 사랑을 최상의 아름다움과 기쁨으로 찬미하고 있다.
첫째 연에서,
두 연인이 만나기 전에 각자가 누렸던 즐거움은 두 사람이 만나 사랑함으로써 얻은 지고한 기쁨에 비하면 '하찮은 기쁨' (country pleasures)에 불과하다.
그 기쁨이 워낙 크기 때문에 둘이 만나기 전에 왜 허송세월하고 있었는지 묻고 있다. 대답을 바라고 묻는 것이 아닌 수사적 물음이다. 젖을 빨고 있었거나, 아니면 어린애처럼 '유치한 즐거움' (country pleasures)에 빠져 있었나라고 의아해한다.
그런 유치한 즐거움에 비하면 둘의 사랑은 매우 격조 있고 영혼을 자극하는 즐거움이라고 시사하고 있다.
'잠자는 일곱 젊은이' (Seven Sleepers)는 기독교를 박해한 로마 황제 데키우스(Decius, 재위 249-251년)가 예수를 믿는 일곱 명의 젊은이를 동굴 속에 가두고 입구를 막았다는 일화를 말한다. 이들이 200년 동안 잠들었다가 깨어 나왔더니 기독교가 세계 종교가 되어 있었다는 전설이 있다.
둘째 연에서,
두 연인의 사랑은 두 사람의 영혼을 깨우고 있다. 둘의 사랑은 아주 강하여 다른 사랑을 차단하고, 두 사람이 함께 하는 '작은 공간' (one little room)을 '우주' (an everywhere)와 같이 넓게 만들고 있다.
이 표현은 개인적 인간을 우주의 축소판으로 보는 르네상스 시대의 통상적 관념을 반영하고 있다. 이 두 사람의 우주 속에 모든 것이 있기 때문에, 새로운 세계를 찾아 나설 필요도 없다. 그런 것은 해양 탐험가나 다른 사람에게 맡겨두고 있다.
두 사람이 '각자 자신의 세계를 가졌지만' (each hath one), '하나로 합치고' (is one), 둘이 '하나의 세계를 함께 갖는다' (Let us possess one world)라고 말하고 있다.
셋째 연에서,
두 사람은 지구의 북반구, 남반구처럼 합치면 꼭 들어맞기 때문에, 자신들보다 '더 좋은 반구' (the better hemispheres)를 찾을 수 없을 것이라고 한다. 거기서는 추운 북쪽도, 해가 져서 어두운 서쪽도 없다고 말하고 있다.
'죽는 것은 무엇이나 균일하게 섞이지 않은 것이다'
(Whatever dies, was not mixed equally)
라고 하였다.
중세 의학에서는 죽음은 육체의 요소들이 '균일하게 섞이지 않은' (not mixed equally) 불균형에 있다고 믿었다. 따라서 이론적으로는 완벽하게 균일하게 섞이면 죽지 않게 된다.
만약 두 사람의 사랑이 '똑같이 닮아' (love so alike) 균일하다면, 사랑은 영원히 죽을 수 없다고 말하고 있다. 두 연인의 사랑이 육체적 사랑을 초월하여 영원히 죽지 않는 영혼의 사랑에 도달하고 있음을 상징하고 있다.
5행의 'but'은 'except for, ~ 이 없다면'의 뜻이다.