The Good Morrow - John Donne Revision Guide

Student Revision Guide
This Revision Guide offers 7 clear sections: Overview; Form and Structure; Close Analysis; Key Themes; Context; Critical Perspectives; Study Questions and Extension Activities.
The Close Analysis section follows three seven-line stanzas: the speaker’s wonder at what they did till they loved, weaned and sucking on country pleasures or snorting in the seven sleepers’ den; the good-morrow to their waking souls and the love that makes one little room an everywhere; and the two hemispheres of their faces, reflected in each other’s eyes, closing on the claim that what is mixed equally cannot die. Form and Structure examines the ABABCCC stanza and its lengthened final line. Context covers the age of exploration and new maps, the legend of the Seven Sleepers, and Donne’s marriage to Ann More. Critical Perspectives asks whether the final conditional confirms the lovers’ permanence or leaves it in doubt.

Quotation Quilt
A selection of key quotations from ‘The Good Morrow’, arranged to support the themes and concepts an essay on this poem is most likely to need.
Quotations are grouped by weaned and country pleasures; the seven sleepers’ den; waking souls and fear; one little room an everywhere; sea-discoverers, maps and worlds; the hemispheres and true plain hearts; and whatever dies was not mixed equally.