The Sun Rising by John Donne
1 Busy old fool, unruly sun,
2 Why dost thou thus,
3 Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
4 Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
5 Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
6 Late school boys and sour prentices,
7 Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
8 Call country ants to harvest offices,
9 Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
10 Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
11 Thy beams, so reverend and strong
12 Why shouldst thou think?
13 I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
14 But that I would not lose her sight so long;
15 If her eyes have not blinded thine,
16 Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,
17 Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
18 Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.
19 Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
20 And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.
21 She's all states, and all princes, I,
22 Nothing else is.
23 Princes do but play us; compared to this,
24 All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
25 Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
26 In that the world's contracted thus.
27 Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
28 To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
29 Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
30 This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.
John Donne pictured to the right was an English writer as well as an Anglican cleric. He was born in 1572. His work gained a following, small as it might have been but was revived nearly 400 years later with the attention gained by the likes of famous writers such as T.S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats.
What drew me to this poem in part was Donne's intense writing ability to marry vernacular prowess with words not modernly familiar and the writing style of connotation throughout. This particular poem would be I think in modern-day a challenge to understand. To wrap one's head around the insinuating phrasing and imagery that the poet envokes. This poem represents what would be called a Lyric. A poem that reveals a limited but deep feeling about some thing or event.
Donne writes from a position of a Lyrical Narrator but active within the piece. As the first stanza of the poem illuminates the reader to experience the description of the rising sun. I immediately sensed an emotion attributed to the writer. One of envy. I initially assumed the poem would be about the sun in its entirety.
But as the lines unfolded, it becomes clear that the narrative is describing the antagonist, that being the sun itself. He writes his contempt towards its constant motion. It is only upon reading Line 9, "Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime," the reader then begins to understand that the writer, an actor within the piece itself is stating that the sun has no reverence for love. No season or climate to consider love's importance to him at this moment.
The lines that follow reveal where the true center of the piece's attention and adoration lies. It is within the intimacy of a moment between two lovers. This one begging that no place of high esteem whether before kings or nations or Rulers as princes would be as glorious as remaining in the sight of his love as well as in the place they are found together. This being as the writer described as if it were itself own solar system. Their love is the center and the walls of the room the sphere encircling them. And in it, the lyric bids the sun away to leave their perfect place alone.
I found this poem to be a refreshing experience of the complexity of words much like Shakespeare's plays requires a depth of comprehension not often demanded of in modern poetry. I found this poet to require of me to be stretched in my reading comprehension. I think of myself as being somewhat of a skilled linguist and avid reader and this poet did not disappoint in his weaving of clever phrasing that gave a vivid yet not entirely evident picture of what this poem is actually expressing.
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