Daily Ramble 42 - REAL POETRY

May 1, 2020

REAL POETRY

Written more than 400 years ago by John Donne (1572 - 1631) (but not published until after his death) his poem "The Good-Morrow" contains an example of what I consider real poetry in the second stanza.

The Good-Morrow

I Wonder by my troth, what thou, and I
Did, till we lov'd? were we not wean'd till then?
But suck'd on countrey pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the seaven sleepers den?
T'was so; But this, all pleasures fancies bee.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, t'was but a dreame of thee.

And now good morrow to our waking soules,
Which watch not one another out of feare;
For love, all love of other sights controules,
And makes one little roome, an every where.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let Maps to other, worlds on worlds have showne;
Let us possesse one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest,
Where can we finde two better hemispheares
Without sharpe North, without declining West?
What ever dies, was not mixd equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.

 It makes it clear that the setting is the bed where two lovers are waking up. I put aside the pleasure which comes from the subtle and masterly rhyme scheme, ababccc and the absence of any feeling that the rhymes are forced.

Here's why I prize the second section: It is the audacious alteration of our expectations and the quantum jumps from physicality to psychology to philosophy within a few perfectly expressed lines (namely, the first four) that blows our minds. First, an apparently conventional greeting (good morrow, i.e., good morning) is addressed, not to the body, but to the soul. We are unexpectedly moved from the bed to some other place. Then, we learn that fear (which is presumed to be the norm with which one soul meets another - a deep suggestion, quickly made) has disappeared in this situation. Finally, we are given the reason; the emotion of love has removed it. Why? The final philosophical conclusion tells us that love overcomes and controls all other perceptions. We are finished off with a demonstrative image - the little room in which they/we find them/ourselves is turned into the universe. When something takes us from the local to the universal with concise and beautiful language it may be properly called poetry.

The only thing that could add to this accomplishment is if the poet's thought is expressing an eternal truth on the deepest level. Of this point, I am not certain. Is the poet describing a momentary sensation or an enduring one? It is already a great accomplishment to exquisitely express the power of the emotion called love, and to suggest that it attaches to something called the soul and has a transformative effect.

In the last section Donne tries to take it to the ultimate point, i.e., that this is something that does not die. But the poetic momentum and "reasoning" of the second section does not carry me with him into the final section. I do not find in the last stanza the persuasiveness of the second. But that is not cause for despair. True poetry is a rarity. It may show in a line or two, once in a while. It has to be mined and refined by the reader willing to dig through a lot of ordinary writing.

Randall Jarrell (1914-1965) said, "A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorm, to be struck by lightening five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great."

END