essay on 'The Sun Rising'

[Caesara Gill]

"The Sun Rising," by John Donne, is a lyric poem about two lovers. The
poem is divided into three stanzas, each ten lines long. The rhyme
scheme in each stanza is ABBACDCDEE. This is a dramatic poem where the
speaker and his lover are in bed together. The speaker personifies the
sun, and is speaking to it throughout the poem. As the sunlight comes
through the windows, the speaker tells the sun to leave them alone. He
seems to feel that their life together is complete, and that the sun
is being a nuisance. He then tells the sun that his lover is worth
more than anything the sun can ever find outside their bedroom.It is a
love poem of an unusual kind. In this poem, composed in the form of a
dramatic monologue, the poet lover is angered at the Sun and calls it
names for disturbing the time him and his lover are spendong together.


The poem has a well-knit, logical structure. It has symmetry of
design. It progresses with the progress and witty shifts in the poet
are thought. He addresses the Sun as “busy old fool”. He calls it
unruly because, by peeping in to the bedroom through windows and
curtains it disturbs the lovers.

The poet-lover tells the Sun that lovers’ seasons do not run to its
motions. He advises the Sun to go and do such routine and dull jobs
like chiding late-schoolboys and apprentices, waking up court-huntsmen
and peasants. The expression “country ants” is imagery. It refers to
the peasants, drudging like ants.However, the poet and his lover are
not like 'them', they are superior to all that is going on around them
and they should not be disturbed. They get up with the Sun and toil
the whole day, till sunset. Love knows no season, no climates. It is
not affected by time. In this section of the poem we come across
personification like “busy old fool” and “saucy pedantic wretch” to
show the annoyance the poet has at this intruder.

The poet’s wit is apparent when he tells the Sun that he has no reason
to think that his beams are “so reverend and strong”. The poet lover
could eclipse and could the beams of the Sun with a wink. He does not
do so because he does not wish to “loose her sight so long.” This
indicates that the love between the poet and his lover is so
obsessive, so strong and has such potency that he does not even want
to lose sight of her for her second.

The Sun travels all over the world in twenty four hours. The poet asks
the Sun to go round the world, see all Kings, come back tomorrow and
say if “both the Indias of spice and mine” be where it left them or
“lie here with me”. The Indias of spice and mine imply both India in
the east and the Red Indians in the west. The progress in navigation,
the discovery of America, Walter Raleigh’s going round the world etc.
during the Renaissance widened the horizon of man’s knowledge about
the universe. Donne profited from this new knowledge.

Donne uses hyperbole to exaggerate the importance of himself and his
lover, "in one bed lay"- he is insinuating that all important elements
of the world are there in the their bed and in their room. They are
everything. To Donne, this moment with his love means everything and
he describes it as such. The same imagery continues in the concluding
verse of the poem where “She’s all States, and all Princes I”. The
poet’s mistress is all States. She is the world. The Sun can shine
over only half of the world at one time. The lovers, on the contrary,
are the world. It logically follows that the Sun is “half as happy as
we”. When we come to this part of the poem we notice a shift in the
mood of the poet.

The Sun is no longer the “busy old fool” or the “saucy pedantic
wretch” of the first verse or stanza. It is now an aged fellow in need
of ease. The poet offers it the needed ease; the Sun’s duty now is
warming the world. It warms only half of the world at a time. By
shining on the lover’s bed it can shine over the whole world at a
time. "Let the bed be the centre and the walls the sphere" of the Sun
with this arrangement the aged Sun can do its duties with ease. At the
beginning of the poem the poet asked the Sun to go away from there.
Now he invites the Sun to go round their bed and shine on them.