The Sun Rising by John Donne

The Sun Rising by John Donne

Busy old fool, unruly sun,

Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?

Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

Late school boys and sour prentices,

Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,

Call country ants to harvest offices,

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams, so reverend and strong

Why shouldst thou think?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,

But that I would not lose her sight so long;

If her eyes have not blinded thine,

Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,

Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine

Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.

Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,

And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

She's all states, and all princes, I,

Nothing else is.

Princes do but play us; compared to this,

All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.

Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,

In that the world's contracted thus.

Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be

To warm the world, that's done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;

This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

INTRODUCTION -

"The Sun Rising" is a poem written by the celebrated English poet, John Donne. It was published in 1633 in his collection, Songs and Sonnets posthumously. It is a thirty-line poem divided into three ten-line stanzas. Each stanza follows the rhyme scheme of ABBACDCDEE. The poem is considered one of Donne’s most charming and successful metaphysical love poems. The speaker personifies the sun and orders it to warm his bed so that he and his lover can stay there all day instead of getting up to go to work.

POET -

John Donne (22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English Metaphysical poet and scholar. He was famous for his sonnets, love poems, religious poems, elegies, songs, and satire sermons. His works deal with the themes of love, sexuality, religion, death. His most famous works include Death Be Not Proud, A Valediction - A Forbidden Mourning, The Flea, and The Good Morrow.

SUMMARY -

LINES 1 TO 10 -

The poem begins with the speaker lying in bed with his lover and chiding the rising sun calling it a “busy old fool.” He questions the sun why it must bother them by shining through windows and curtains. He questions the sun's motives and yearns for the sun to go away so that he and his lover can stay in bed. He scolds the sun saying that whether two lovers will have to decide their schedules based on his movement across the sky. He admonishes the rude sun—the “Saucy pedantic wretch”—to go and bother late schoolboys and sour apprentices, to tell the court-huntsmen that the King will ride, and to call the poor farmworkers to their harvesting. All these depend on the sun but love is quite different. Love is above the influence of season, climate, hour, day, or month.

LINES 11 TO 20 -

The poet chides the sun by asking that why should he think that his beams are strong. The speaker says that he could block those sun rays simply by closing his eyes, except that he does not want to lose sight of his beloved for even an instant. He asks the sun —if the sun’s eyes have not been blinded by his lover’s eyes— to tell him by late tomorrow whether the treasures of East Indies and West Indies are in the same place they occupied yesterday or if they are now in bed with the speaker. He says that if the sun asks to see the kings he shined on yesterday, he will learn that they all lie in bed with the speaker. This means that his lover is above all kings and so, beside him in bed are all the riches and gold that he could ever want.

LINES 21 TO 30 -

The speaker then explains this claim by saying that his beloved is like every country in the world, and he is like every king; nothing else is real. Princes simply play at having countries; compared to what he has, all honor is mimicry and all wealth is alchemy. The speaker says the sun should be half as happy as he and his lover are, for the fact that the world is contracted into their bed making the sun’s job much easier in its old age. The sun desires ease, and now all it has to do is shine on their bed and it shines on the whole world. The poet says that "this bed is your center, and the bedroom walls are the outside boundaries of the solar system."

THEMES -

• The authority of love - The speaker of the poem, considers his love superior to the rules of the universe. He wants to bend the rule of the sun's movement by challenging its authority and claims that love gives him the power to stay in bed all day with his lover. The poem also elevates the importance and power of love above work and duty.

• Love as a microcosm of the universe - The poem uses metaphor to pack the entire world into a small space. This technique is grounded in the idea of a "microcosm," a popular Renaissance belief that the human body was a small-scale model of the whole universe. The small space, however, is not a single body but rather the lovers' bed. The poet claims that warming the lovers is similar to warming the whole world.

END -

The poem has been criticized by most critics saying that it lacks basic logic. It is unfair to replace the physical world with internal love. The poem's playful use of language and extended metaphor. The personification of the sun has added a great touch to the authority of the poem.