THE SUN RISING
Summary and Commentary
Lying in bed with his beloved, the speaker chides the rising sun, calling it a "busy old fool," and asking why it must bother them through windows and curtains. Love is not subject to season or to time, he says, and he admonishes the 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 country ants to their harvesting.
Why should the sun think that his beams are strong? The speaker says that he could eclipse them 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 beloved's eyes--to tell him by late tomorrow whether the treasures of India 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 about the kings he shone on yesterday, he will learn that they all lie in bed with the speaker.
The speaker 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 honour is mimicry and all wealth is alchemy. The sun, the speaker says, is half as happy as he and his beloved are, for the fact that the world is contracted into their bed makes the sun's job much easier--in its old age, it desires ease, and now all it has to do is to shine on their bed and it shines on the whole world. "This bed thy centre is," the speaker tells the sun, "these walls, thy sphere."
Form
The three regular stanzas of "The Sun Rising" are each ten lines long and follow a line-stress pattern of 4255445555--lines one, five, and six are metered in iambic tetrameter, line two is in dimeter, and lines three, four, and seven through ten are in pentameter. The rhyme scheme in each stanza is ABBACDCDEE.
Commentary
One of Donne's most charming and successful metaphysical love poems, "The Sun Rising" is built around a few hyperbolic assertions-- first, that the sun is conscious and has the watchful personality of an old busybody; second, that love, as the speaker puts it, "no season knows, nor clime, / Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time"; third, that the speaker's love affair is so important to the universe that kings and princes simply copy it, that the world is literally contained within their bedroom. Of course, each of these assertions simply describes figuratively a state of feeling--to the wakeful lover, the rising sun does seem like an intruder, irrelevant to the operations of love; to the man in love, the bedroom can seem to enclose all the matters in the world. The inspiration of this poem is to pretend that each of these subjective states of feeling is an objective truth.
Accordingly, Donne endows his speaker with language implying that what goes on in his head is primary over the world outside it; for instance, in the second stanza, the speaker tells the sun that it is not so powerful, since the speaker can cause an eclipse simply by closing his eyes. This kind of heedless, joyful arrogance is perfectly tuned to the consciousness of a new lover, and the speaker appropriately claims to have all the world's riches in his bed (India, he says, is not where the sun left it; it is in bed with him). The speaker captures the essence of his feeling in the final stanza, when, after taking pity on the sun and deciding to ease the burdens of his old age, he declares "Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere."
Critical Appreciation
"The Sun Rising" is a typical poem by Donne, characterised by his usual vigour, sprightliness and freshness. It is a "saucy, muscular poem". It expresses a lover's vexation against the sun-rising. The dawn is regarded as an impertinence which comes to disturb the lovers. The poet is delightfully outspoken and defiant. He ridicules the sun as a "saucy pedantic wretch" and calls in question his right to peep through the windows and curtains of a lover's bedroom. There is defiance, contempt, perfect love and the deftly moving shuttle of metaphysical conceit. The supremacy of love which transcends both time and space, for it knows 'no season and no clime', is established with a daring jugglery of words.
This poem, like most of Donne's love poems is inspired by the poet's love for his wife, Anne Moore. Donne's love amounts to passion. It is a perfect synthesis of spiritual and physical love. There are brilliant metaphysical conceits in the second and third stanzas of the poem. For example, the beloved is supposed to be combining in herself all the fragrance and the gold of East and West Indies:
"Look and to-morrow late tell me.
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine.
Be where thou left them or lie here with me."
The lover and the beloved are compared to all the states and all the princes of the world, rolled into one:
"She's all states, and all princes I;
Nothing else is;"
The lover's bedroom is considered to be the epitome of the whole world.
"Shine here on us and thou art everywhere."
The poem is singularly free from the conventional and sentimental claptrap of love that was such a marked feature of Elizabethan love poetry. Donne's beloved rises superior to all the Elizabethan sweet-hearts in as much as she is an exalted being-she is all the states of the world rolled into one, she combines in herself all the fragrance of spices and all the gold of rich mines.
The Sun Rising is one of the most successful love poems of Donne. As a poet of love, he can be an extreme realist and deals with the physical side of it as well as its spiritual side. Here, he treats of a situation very significant for wedded lovers, but unusual in the poetry of love-two lovers in bed who refuse to get up when the sun shines on them in the morning.
The poet chides the sun in language which for its boldness is unmatched in lyric poetry. The sun is a busy, old fool; it is a saucy, and pedantic wretch. It can go and chide late school boys and apprentices but has no jurisdiction over the poet and his wife. Lover's seasons do not run to the motions of the sun:
"Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, or months, which are the rags of time."
In expressing his contempt for the sun, the poet displays all his learning and metaphysical wit, and extravagant conceits are employed in glorifying his beloved. Recent geographical discoveries supply him with the image of "both the Indias of spice and mine" (India and the West Indies and America). His wife is to him these two Indias rolled into one.
The poet's extravagant fancy discovers that he and his beloved in their secure possession of each other, are like all states and princes to each other. Princes only imitate them. She is all the world contracted into one feminine form and hence, by shining on her, the sun performs his duty towards the whole earth. Following up on this conceit, the poet says that if the sun shines on him and his wife, it is, in a sense, shining everywhere-the bed becomes its centre and the walls of the bedroom its sphere.
The poem is remarkable for its boldness of thought and originality of execution. The way in which the sun is made to appear as an unwelcome guest and the way in which he is finally allowed to stay in the bedroom of the lovers are the most striking examples of Donne's poetic inventiveness and ingenuity. The poet, after establishing the supremacy of love, permits the sun, (in a very patronising manner, of course) to stay in his bedroom.
In this poem, the lover chides (rebukes) the sun-rising because it disturbs the lovers. Love is above the sense of time. It knows no hours, days or months. The sun should not call on lovers; it should call on school students and apprentices, courtiers and country ants. Love knows no season nor clime. The whole world has contracted into the lovers' bedroom. Thus the sun need not go around the earth, it should only pay a visit to the lovers' bedroom and it would meet the whole world there.
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