Sun Rising

John Donne’s “The Sun Rising”

This poem has a central opposition between two concepts: Sun and Love. The poet compares them, the Sun, physical, and Love, abstract. The Sun is ruled by time being itself an indicator of it, while Love does not know about any time measure.

First of all, the poet personifies the Sun with adjectives like “busy, old, fool”. He also seems to address his words to the Sun and asks questions as if the Sun could answer. The poet sees the Sun as a reference of time, as it let people know that the day has started. We can see this in the first stanza, where the poet says to the Sun that he should go to call others and not him and his lover because their love does not care about time: “Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time”.

In the next stanza, the poet says that the sun’s beams are not too strong as he can make them disappear just by closing his eyes, but if he does it he will not see his lover: “I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink, but that I would not lose her sight so long”.

In the final stanza, the poet compares his lover to “all states” and himself to “all princes” and says that there is nothing else. The poet thinks that he and his lover are the world so the sun is warming the whole world when warming them.

We can clearly perceive a progression in the poet’s attitude. In the first stanza the poet seems to be angry with the Sun because it has interrupted him and his lover, it bothers them who are on bed, and for the poet its image means that everybody have to wake up and start once again with their daily routines. We can see that anger in the use of adjectives like “fool”, “pedantic”, and in rhetoric questions like “Why dost thou thus?” However, as the poem goes on, the poet’s feelings against the sun are calmed down. Finally, the poet is not angry with the sun, he has forgotten his first reaction and now his attitude is condescending. He invites the Sun to stay with them and shine.

This is a love poem as it expresses the speaker’s desire to be with his lover, which is the most important thing in the world. He does not want the day to start as the night is the “lovers’ season”. I can appreciate his different reactions and feelings, and I can easily get to the poet’s mind and situation through his words but it costs me to be conscious about that process.

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