“The Sun Rising” is a typical love poem by Donne,
characterised by his usual vigour, sprightliness and freshness. 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 a passion. It is a perfect synthesis of the
spiritual and physical love. The supremacy of love which transcends both time
and space, for it knows ‘no season and no climes’ is established with a daring
jugglery of words.
In the opening stanza, the sun is addressed as “busy, old
fool” flashing his light into the lover’s bedroom, perhaps with the intention of
waking up and parting them. In a tone of dramatic monologue,
the poet lover reprimands the Sun and calls it names for disturbing love
making. Instead he may go about his trivial errands
like pulling up ‘late school boys’ and lazy apprentices who hate to work.
The country ants and courtiers may knuckle under his authority but not so
the lovers. Love is above time, which is regulated by the sun. For
lovers, seasons, hours and days have no meaning.
The Sun is the
supreme power-house of the world. Yet it should not brag over it. 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 right so long.” . In hyperbolic language he asks the sun if the eyes
of his beloved are not brighter than sunlight. Gazing into her eyes, the
sun may feel dazzled. All the assets of mines of the West Indies and
spices of the East Indies are more valuable than his lady love in the bed.
The lovers in Donne’s poem are the archetypal ideas or the
soul of the world:
“She’s all
slates, and all princes I;”
Together they constitute the soul of the world. The pomp
and majesty of a king is then a mere imitation of the glory attained by lovers.
Compared to their spiritual wealth, all material wealth seems
counterfeit. The poet-lover offers it the needed ease. The Sun’s duty 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.
“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 also 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.
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Literature liberates and leavens our latent learning with limpid lumina. So myself a lustful literary lacky.