An Audio Guide to Poetry Recitation - 7. "The Good-Morrow"

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Here is a classic renaissance love lyric recited by David Mason.

[Voice of David Mason] I'm going to read a poem by John Donne. It's called The Good-Morrow. It's about waking up with your lover. This is a poem I am particularly fond of and I actually used to annoy girlfriends by reciting it to them when I was a young man. Here it is.

The Good-Morrow
by John Donne
[Read by David Mason]

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 snorted 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 do slacken, none can die.