![]() There is something of the adolescent melodrama of first love here, which again suggests that Donne is exercising his intelligence and subtlety to make a different kind of point. This poem gives voice to the feeling of lovers that they are outside of time and that their emotions are the most important things in the world. The final line contains a play on the Ptolemaic astronomical idea that the Earth was the center of the universe, with the Sun rotating around the Earth: “This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare.” Here Donne again gives ultimate universal importance to the lovers, making all the physical world around them subject to them. ![]() ![]() Indeed, the sun need not leave the room by shining on them “thou art everywhere” (29). The strange process of reducing the entire world to the bed of the lovers reaches its zenith in the last stanza: “In that the world’s contracted thus” (26). As strong as the sun’s light is, it pales in comparison to the spiritual light that shines from the divine and which brings man to love the divine. As usual, such an extreme comparison leads us to see a spiritual metaphor in the poem. This is a monstrous, bold comparison, a hyperbole of the highest order. That is, all the beautiful and sovereign things in the world, which the sun meets as it travels the world each day, are combined in his mistress. “She’s all states, and all princes I”(21). Indeed, the sun should “tell me/Whether both th’Indias of spice and mine/Be where thou lef’st them, or lie here with me.” Here, Donne lists wondrous and exotic places (the Indias are the West and East Indies, well known in Donne’s time for their spices and precious metals) and says that his mistress is all of those things: “All here in one bed lay” (20). This was a standard Renaissance love-poem convention (compare Shakespeare “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” in Sonnet 130) to proclaim his beloved’s loveliness. ![]() “If her eyes have not blinded thine” (13) implies that his beloved’s eyes are more brilliant than sunlight. The lover then moves on to loftier claims. The poet is emphasizing that the sun has no real power over what he and his lover do, while he is the one who chooses to allow the sun in because by it he can see his lover’s beauty. Yet, the lover doesn’t want to “lose her sight so long” as a wink would take. He boasts that he “could eclipse and cloud them with a wink.” In a way this is true he can cut out the sun from his view by closing his eyes. In the second stanza the poet continues to mock the sun, saying that its “beams so reverend and strong” are nothing compared to the power and glory of their love. He imagines a world, or desires one, where the embraces of lovers are not relegated only to the night, but that lovers can make their own time as they see fit. The poet wants to know why it is that “to thy motions lovers’ seasons run” (4). The poet then suggests that the sun go off and do other things rather than disturb them, such as going to tell the court huntsman that it is a day for the king to hunt, or to wake up ants, or to rush late schoolboys and apprentices to their duties. The speaker is annoyed, wishing that the day has not yet come (compare Juliet’s assurances that it is certainly not the morning, in Romeo and Juliet III.v). The sun is peeking through the curtains of the window of their bedroom, signaling the morning and the end of their time together. He asks why it is shining in and disturbing “us” (4), who appear to be two lovers in bed. The poet personifies the sun as a “busy old fool” (line 1). The poet’s tone is mocking and railing as it addresses the sun, covering an undercurrent of desperate, perhaps even obsessive love and grandiose ideas of what his lover is. The rhyme, however, never varies, each stanza running abbacdcdee. The longest lines are generally at the end of the three stanzas, but Donne’s focus here is not on perfect regularity. ![]() The meter is irregular, ranging from two to six stresses per line in no fixed pattern. “The Sunne Rising” is a 30-line poem in three stanzas, written with the poet/lover as the speaker. After all, sunbeams are nothing compared to the power of love, and everything the sun might see around the world pales in comparison to the beloved’s beauty, which encompasses it all. Lovers should be permitted to make their own time as they see fit. The sun should go away and do other things rather than disturb them, like wake up ants or rush late schoolboys to start their day. The poet asks the sun why it is shining in and disturbing him and his lover in bed. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |