dots-menu
×

Home  »  English Poetry I  »  175. The Good Morrow

English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

John Donne

175. The Good Morrow

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 snored 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 can slacken, none can die.