John Donne's 'The Sun Rising' PDF

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John Donne’s The Sun Rising explores how a night of love enhances one’s own supposed importance to a grander scale. The three major themes present throughout aid in illuminating one another and bring forth this idea. The first theme is the contrast between the kind of love the speaker thinks he has ...

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John Donne’s The Sun Rising explores how a night of love enhances one’s own supposed importance to a grander scale. The three major themes present throughout aid in illuminating one another and bring forth this idea. The first theme is the contrast between the kind of love the speaker thinks he has fallen into, and the kind he is actually experiencing. The former elicits genuine world-changing feelings, whereas the latter results in powerful world-dominating ones. The second theme of belittled representation of the sun is used to substantiate the first theme by providing a normal point to compare the new-found power the speaker feels from love with – the sun. The third theme of time passing helps show the speaker’s growing realisation of the temporariness of what he feels, his boastful tone diluting into desperation. Donne employs irony, imagery and metaphors to illuminate the first theme, personification, metaphors and rhetoric questions for the second, and external structure that plays with rhythm, internal structure dealing with sounds and setting for the third. The kind of love the speaker thinks he is experiencing is true love that will last forever, the feeling his lover provides him allowing him to transcend laws of the world. However, the kind the speaker is actually experiencing, I think, is a more lustful kind, intense and reckless due to its novelty but not likely to last. This can be supported by Donne presenting the value of the lover strictly in aesthetic terms, as can be seen with when the speaker addresses the sun to look, but only, “If her eyes have not blinded thine” (15). The diction of “blinded” establishes irony as the word is commonly associated with when one directly looks at the sun. That very word is used to highlight just how beautiful the speaker’s lover is, blinding what is known to blind. By appealing only to sight, her value goes as far as her looks, establishing a more lust-like love as opposed to true love. To enhance this idea, the speaker is only concerned with sensations that are attributed with sexual desire – sight and sound; sight in terms of physical attraction that instigates intercourse and sound being the indication of fulfillment of pleasure, as opposed to mental stimulation. Donne uses imagery concerning only these two senses, for example, “But that I would not lose her sight so

long” (14) for seeing and “And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay” (20) for sound. The former is when the speaker expresses his reluctance to blink so as to maximise seeing his lover. Although endearing at first, the line begs the question of why her visual worth is his primary concern. The latter is when the speaker insinuates that the intensity of his love has brought the world into bed with him, the proof being the sounds it produces. This strings together the idea of sounds and bed, alluding to lust. The imagery is especially amplified due to the rhyme structure of the second quatrain in each stanza being of a Shakespearean sonnet style of CDCD. The rhyme is evenly spread out, allowing the reader to focus more on the imagery. In order to consolidate the immaturity of the speaker’s love, metaphors are used, for example, “She is all states, and all princes I” (21), where the idea of ownership is introduced. The speaker views himself as someone who commands his lover, just as a prince commands the state he owns. His lover is reduced to merely a piece of land, and by extension, merely her body. This sort of depiction takes away from the genuineness of the speaker’s supposed love and brings it into the realm of impulsive and lustful. Such sporadic love follows a spike in ego and then a comedown, as opposed to a consistent rise. This ego can be seen when personification is employed to reduce an intangible force such as the sun to the level of humans to allow for criticism towards it. For example, “Why dost thou thus / Through windows and through curtains call on us?” (2-3), the human-like characteristic being the ability to call. The effect is amplified with the delayed verb, first expressing the effect and then revealing the cause. The reader, too, is forced to wait for the word of action, just as the speaker has to wait for the eventual rise of the sun to put an inevitable end to his reverie. Donne continues the comparison with the sun through the imperative tense, commanding the sun as opposed to viceversa. This bravado can be attributed to the short-lived sense of invincibility a night with his lover brings. For example, “...go chide / Late school boys and sour prentices, / Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride” (5-7), the imperatives being “go chide” and “go tell,” thus establishing

higher authority of the speaker relative to the sun. Additionally, the individuals that the sun does have power over are those who cater to their superiors as opposed to holding their own. For example, schoolboys being subordinate to teachers, apprentices trying to impress their bosses and court huntsmen working for the king. Donne also utilises metaphor to reveal the speaker’s perception of the sun, which is inferior to him. For example, “Busy old fool, unruly sun” (1), where the adjectives of “busy, old” and “unruly” before the nouns “fool” and “sun” help equate the two ideas together. Here, the sun is portrayed as a grumpy senile man who is unwanted, the effect more pronounced as the line starts with a trochee. Donne uses another metaphor of “Saucy pedantic wretch...” (5), where the qualities revealed about the sun change to incessant nagging. The metaphors help the reader understand the speaker’s outlook on the sun, one of being constantly on duty. Rhetoric questions cap off the representation of the sun, applied to question its credibility. For example, “Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?” (4), where the speaker is insinuating that the sun is deluded if it thinks lovers like himself will dance to its beat. This can be seen again with “Thy beams, so reverend and strong / Why shouldst thou think?” (11-12). Donne establishes a commendable position of the sun by praising its rays, only to demolish that idea with the rhetoric question, coupled with the delayed verb of “think” to make it really sting. The third theme of time passing is used to show the transition from the initial euphoria the speaker feels after a night with his lover, to the eventual decline. This can be seen by the overarching tone shift from the speaker being snarky and egotistic, to rationalising with the sun for more time. Externally, the poem is laid out in 30 lines, each stanza of ten being broken into quatrain-quatrain-couplet format. The first quatrain is in the Petrarchan sonnet style with rhyme structure ABBA, and the second in Shakespearean of CDCD, the couplet a simple EE. The first quatrain is used to make a claim with the condensed rhyme structure allowing it to stand out more, the second quatrain’s de-emphasised sounds make it easier to focus on the imagery, or the evidence

provided for the claim, and the couplet is used to wrap up. By keeping the external structure constant in each stanza, the internal structure stands out, making the tone shift more pronounced. This can be supported by the first stanza being guided by “R,” “K,” and “T” sounds, which allude to defiance, whereas the third stanza is more “L”, “M,” “N,” and “W” sounds, the tone mellowing out. For this reason, the poem ends with, “Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere, / This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere” (29-30), where the speaker pleads the sun to shine on the lovers, the compromise being that they will make the night worthwhile by illuminating the rest of the world. Time passing is also consolidated with the never-changing setting. Throughout the poem, the lovers stay in bed, shedding light on the speaker wanting to extend the feeling of intense happiness for as long as possible, completely milking it. While laying in bed, the speaker has traveled across borders from India to West Indies, showing the power of the kind of love he is experiencing. However, it is only temporary, hence the reluctance to move. Donne’s central theme of lustful love making him feel invincible is substantiated by comparing the speaker’s sense of power with the sun’s power, which is the second theme. The third theme of time passing helps aid in showing the growing realisation that this feeling is short-lived. These themes are duly captured by the title of “The Sun Rising” as it alludes to both the beginning of something, while simultaneously hinting at the end. Donne takes a cliché idea such as love that often seems errorless and uses that very feature of it to critique on its recklessness.

Word Count: 1,496

Bibliography: 1. Donne, John. ‘The Sun Rising.’ The Norton Anthology English Literature, Vol. B, 9th Edition. (1962): 1376....