Making Sense of Love in John Donne's Poetry

Rich in his appraisal of both love’s sanctity and its erotic steaminess, John Donne was a poet who helped expand society’s notion of where and how the tenderness of love could be harnessed metaphysically. Allegedly written in the 1590s, in “The Good Morrow”, a supposedly much younger Donne metaphorically touches on love as an awakening, a binding of two lovers, two pieces of a puzzle. Conversely, in “A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning”, allegedly written in 1611 or 1612, Donne uses sound devices and metaphor to describe love as something with borderless scope, and durability to all tests.

Love transcending borders (Source: Mackenzie, M; Shape; 2015)

Across both poems, Donne metaphysically sheds a light on times where lovers stand the test of distance and life without one another, so as to emphasize the power of love in different ways. Specifically, love’s charm can either open lovers to a world of higher maturity, or will them to persevere with courage and resilience in moments of separation. In the first stanza of “The Good Morrow”, Donne uses metaphors and cultural connotations of infancy to describe life as unripe and incomplete before the two lovers meet. By suggesting they were even “weaned till then”, Donne uses the metaphor of babies upgrading from breastmilk to cow’s milk to evoke an exaggerated image of their immature and bubbled way of living before finding each another, and before being awakened by love. Furthermore, by referencing the “Seven Sleepers’ Den”, the catholic legend of seven boys “snort[ing]” and sleeping for hundreds of years in a sealed cave before waking to a vast and beautifully advanced Roman society is a cultural metaphor for the sealed, unenlightened and “childish” life the lovers live before being awakened by one another.

Illustration of theSeven Sleepers’ Den from the Menologion of Basil II. (Source: Wikipedia)

This condemnation of life as something incomplete without love is contrasted with Donne’s case for love as another binding, but rather one of two souls as one, in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”, where that bind holds potent and shatterproof always, even in times of separation. A poem written for his wife Anne upon his business departure to Europe, Donne expresses how they are bound “by a love so much refined”, paradoxically allowing them to remain together in spirit “inter-assured of the mind”, regardless of the contact of “eyes, lips and hands to miss”. Conversely, Donne uses alliteration and rhyme to emphatically juxtapose love of meaning with “dull sublunary lovers’ love… whose soul is sense” and whose love therefore dwindles at the first sign of “absence”. In this sense, an older Donne matured by marriage argues that true love, love of soul, maturity and meaning, spiritually transcends touch and sense, giving solace to lovers even in separation. Seeing love from this patient, convicted perspective evolved from Donne’s description of a more youthful, exotic experience of love in “The Good Morrow”, where the lovers depend and live off of each other’s worlds in “one little room”. Thus, while both poems explore the potency of love, they reflect different levels of maturity in Donne’s life, where once love’s awakening was contingent on superficiality and closeness, as opposed to later holding strong through spirit.

The love in our hearts powers us to push on. (Source: Yiu, Y; Inside Science; 2020)

Throughout both poems, analogies using the earth and machinery metaphysically describe romantic love as an attraction that holds people together. In “A Valediction: Forbidding Morning”, Donne gives the concept of spiritual love physical qualities through metaphor and simile, creating imagery for its elasticity that keeps lovers bound mechanically no matter how stretched apart. The spiritual composure love gives is described as malleable “like gold to airy thinness beat”. Furthermore, the two feet of “stiff twin compasses” paradoxically describes the two souls of the lovers “which are one”, anchored together mechanically; Anne’s soul “makes no show to move, but doth if” Donne’s does, “lean[ing] and hearken[ing] after” him as he moves further away until his soul “end[s] where [it] begun.” Through this mechanical analogy, the robust, binding strength of love as a spiritual force holding the lovers together is visualized vividly.

Two feet of a compass, distant but inseparable at the same time. (Source: Cummings Study Guides)

In contrast, in the final stanza of “The Good Morrow”, the nature of the Earth is described metaphorically to encapsulate not the impenetrable bond, but the irresistible attraction of the younger lovers’ affection. The lovers’ two faces stare into each other like “two better hemispheres”, only “without sharp north” and “declining west”. In this sense, Donne equates their love to the beauty of nature, only differing in how their love never declines into darkness nor into sharp cold. Therefore, in contrast to “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”, here, through the lens of nature, “The Good Morrow” touches on this youthful force of love’s unconditional beauty, not designed to withstand any hardship as in this naïve youthful headspace there is no hardship to withstand. Hence, while both poems use analogies to describe love’s potence, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” uses mechanical imagery to emphasize a more mature force of love’s resilience and imperviousness to challenges and the test of distance, “The Good Morrow” discriminatorily selects the most beautiful scenes to build on this more naïve, superficial and youthful narrative of unwavering force of love.

Where Earth and the heavens collide. (Source: Russell Lynch)

While the comparisons across these poems have revealed that Donne never faltered in harnessing cultural references, sound devices and metaphorical analogies that allowed readers to visualize the sensation of love metaphysically, it can be said that these two poems — and two different points in Donne’s life — reflect different valuing and appreciation for what love is subject to different levels of maturity. In “The Good Morrow”, while the idea of life without love provides insights on the awakening love can give, this youthful experience of love itself is valued narrowly only for its superficial perks, only praised when lovers are close to one another and darkness never protrudes. Contrasting, in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”, a much more mature appreciation for love informed by Donne’s increased years of wisdom values love for the harmony of the souls that never falters, and stands the test of time, distance and hardship. Henceforth, Donne’s evolving perspective on love opens readers’ eyes to the cultural idea of maturity as what determines how meaningfully people pursue and make sense of love.