Donne seriously believed in separate planets and planes, and also the existence of more than one Christ – a belief that Donne later abandoned. Academics also see the poem as a more general allegory of the evolution of minds from childishness, as typified by the first stanza where the lovers "suck'd on country pleasures, childishly", towards a more mature form of love. Much has also been made of Donne's references to compasses and maps in the third stanza. Robert L. Sharp, writing in Modern Language Notes, argues that these references can be logically interpreted as yet another reference to love. The maps Donne would have been familiar with are not the Mercator-style maps, but instead cordiform maps, which appear in the shape of a heart. More than simply heart-shaped, cordiform maps also allow the display of multiple worlds, with opposing hemispheres – and Sharp argues that Donne's work references such a multiple world map in lines 11 to 18. Julia M. Walker, writing in The Review of English Studies, notes that Sharp's work is "essential to an intelligent discussion of this extended image", but disagrees with his conclusions. In particular, she argues that Sharp's conclusions are incorrect, and that the actual words of the poem refer to a cordiform map showing a single world rather than one showing two worlds; "my face on thine eye", for example, not "eyes". Instead, Walker suggests that Donne was basing his work on William Cunningham's Cosmographical Glasse, a 1559 book which showed a single-leafed cordiform map. More importantly, it gave a way to draw a two-leafed, heart-shaped map that displayed only a single world; this interpretation would "reconcile and unify" the problems with interpreting "The Good-Morrow". The essential distinction is thus that, while both interpret Donne's work as referencing cordiform maps, Sharp sees it as referencing a map showing two worlds, while Walker maintains that the reference is to a map showing only one. References Bibliography 1633 poems Poetry by John Donne