This journal will give you an opportunity to read and provide your response to an example of metaphysical poetry.  Read the poem slowly and be sure to read the prompt below carefully.  Notice that it focuses on an imagined scene that is created by the poem.

John Donne’s poems are usually dramatic.  That is, they capture an immediate sense of a scene unfolding as the poem is written.  In “Good Morrow” Donne is talking to his wife or mistress of him.  What is the dramatic situation – where are they and what is he trying to say to her?

Respond to this prompt ( 350- 420 Words) 

THE GOOD-MORROW.

 by John Donne

 I WONDER by my troth, what thou and I

 Did, till we loved?  were we not wean’d till then?

 But suck’d 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 mix’d equally;

 If our two loves be one, or thou and I

 Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.