Comentary: "The Good Morrow"-Not bad, eh?

Life, death, and love are some of the most common subjects explored by both philosophers and poets alike. John Donne is no exception to the vast amount of those who have faced the theme of
eternal parting as a physical event, leaving the soul intact, and, therefore, capable of binding two
individuals. As in his poem entitled "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning", Donne has explored
physical versus spiritual separation in "The Good Morrow". In the latter of which, he is partial to the use of question marks in addition to imagery in order to emphasize the theme of the poem, causing it to have a greater emotional effect on the reader through the bittersweet mood it evokes.

Upon reading this poem for the first time, I immediately noticed the recurring use of question marks, as opposed to a solid rhyme scheme, which would have caused this poem to have a narrative, sing-song flow. After chewing on these leathery question marks for some time, I finally came to their purpose. Number one: Think! If a poem has a solid, set in stone rhyme scheme, it is usually to create a song-like flow. A word jumps to mind: predictability. Based on a solid structure, we can infer that a poem may have a hidden message; the themes and content of
this poem are relatively clear, known, and even predictable. By screwing up the chance of rigid
structure with all of these questions, I believe that Donne may have subconsiously made a
valuable point: life is unpredictable. We never know when we'll fall off a cliff, bleed to death of ebola, or end up being devoured by a robotic shark. As a result, we must keep in mind that our souls are capable of living, and loving on. The interrupted flow of this poem-the ?s led me to think that Donne told us of the uncertainty of the eternal, as well as the waking. Number Two:
The ?s really drive it home-at least for me. By asking all of these questions, the poem is set up perfectly for a conversational or call and response type effect. Posing questions not only sets uus up for an eventual answer (second stanza), but works quite well as an introduction in the first stanza-He basically says "What have we been doing our entire lives?! Have we been 'saving ourselves' for fear? Have we been letting ourselves go on impulsive pleasures??!! Gee-I did get to be with ya, but honey, its like a dream, this life, it doesn't last-the physical love between us will eventually decay and we'll die." This basically draws us in because death, love,a nd life are all universally explored, though not necessarily understood, topics.

On to the imagery. First, I thought personally about his message-then connected it to the rest of the poem. The use of figurative langage-the visual imagery really hit me. To me, specifically "My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears," (15) says it all.First of all we gots to uinderstand just what this means, 'cause this old-timey talk can be confusing. Essentially, these two lovers are fully connected-spiritually. Whoa-hold the phone-wha?! Exactly. This brings me to Second of All:
The eyes are the windows to the soul, as is the common belief. With this, as inplugging numbers into an equation, we see that the souls ofthese lovers aretruly bound-through the eyes, we are able to peek in and see the soul of the other individual.

Overall, my opinion of this poem was............
Well, its basically a cliche. I've seen this message so many times before, so naturally, I may not be blown away by "The Good Morrow". But after taking a deeper look, I've realized that this cliche is a-okay.