Snorted we in the seven sleepers den

 

1But suck'd on countrey pleasures, childishly?

Or, Snorted we in the seven sleepers den?

 

Exp. These lines have been quoted from "The Good Morrow" written by John Donne, the exponent of the 'Metaphysical School of Poetry in these lines the poet has suggested the awareness of the lovers.

 

These lines occur in the first stanza of the poem. In this part of the poem the speaker expresses his surprise at the realisation that they had already been in love before they became  conscious of it There is a metaphor in these lines. The unawareness of the lovers has been compared here with the subconscious state of the seven brothers who slept for two hundred years. These brothers were Christian in Ephesus, which was ruled by Decius, a non-Christian Emperor. The Emperor declared death sentence to those seven brothers in 251 AD. To save themselves, the seven brothers escaped and hid in a cave. The entrance of the cave was blocked up. The seven brothers slept there for about two hundred years. When they came out, during the reign of younger Theodosius, they were still young. This is a conceit in which the unaware lovers have been compared to the sleeping brothers. It displays Donne's interest in ancient learning. Here the conceit has been used very effectively to suggest that the lovers did not know that they were already in love.