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According to Grierson there are three distinctive strains in Donne's love poetry : 1.Cynical 2. Platonic and 3. Conjugal. The first is found in such lyrics as ‘Women's Constancy’, ‘The Indifferent’, ‘Air and Angels’, ‘The Dreame’ and ‘The Apparition’. The Platonic strain is present in poems like ‘Twicknam Garden’, ‘The Funerall’, ‘The Blossome’, ‘The Primrose’, etc. The third, conjugal love which is less artificial than the second and purer than the first is expressed in the poems addressed to his wife, Ann More. These are ‘The Anniversary’, ‘The Dreame’, ‘The Sun Rising’, ‘The Canonization’, ‘The Break of Day’, ‘The Expiration’, etc.
‘The Sun Rising’ is a witty and amusing poem. It is light verse, but it is also extremely serious. It is, in fact, a good example of the fact that seriousness is different from solemnity and may be accompanied with a good deal of frivolity. This poem also illustrates Donne's revolt against the artificiality and absurdity of the fashionable love poetry of courtly chivalry in which the conceit of the beloved's eyes being regarded as brighter than the sun had long become a tedious formula. Donne laughs at the hyperboles or the fantastic exaggerations of the courtly poetry by pretending to accept- them. Its final objective is to express the poet's feeling of happiness and completeness in the possession of his mistress. She is so all-perfect, all-lovely, all-complete that she, and she alone, justifies the fantastic hyperboles of courtly poetry.
The poet treats the sun familiarly, colloquially, and irreverently. It is one of the paradoxes of the poem that the poet uses the adjective "unruly' for the sun when the sun is really the standard of order, regulation, and law.
"Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?"
The poem begins with a rhetorical arrogant address to the sun. Like many of Donne's poems, this one begins abruptly, with a sharp, surprising colloquial exclamation: 'Busy old fool, unruly Sun.The poet expresses his contempt for the sun by addressing it as "saucy pedantic wretch". The reason for this is that the poet, in his joy at his complete possession of his mistress, feels that he possesses, rules, and controls the whole world, and therefore is superior to the sun itself.
The lovers are indifferent to the rising of the sun because they can go on making love even after the sun n even after the sun has arisen. The lover, further, claims that he can eclipse and darken the sun merely I wink. The lover has only to close his eyes, and the sunlight exists no more for him and the beloved's eyes are so bright that their light can dazzle the sun.
"I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long:"
Usually one is dazzled by the sun's brightness, but here is the reversal of the situation. In the second stanza the poet continues his boastful tone. The lover asks the sun to go and find out whether the East Indies and the West are still situated at their original location or they have moved from there to lie with him in his bed.
"Whether both the" India's of spice and mine
Be where thou lefi'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt here, All here in one bed lay."
The idea is that the beloved who lies in the bed is a combination of both the east and the West Indies. The East Indies were known for their fragrant spices, and the West Indies for their diamond mines. The mistress sums up in herself all the riches and perfumes of the East and the West. She is the glory of the whole world. Also, the setting of the scene, only implied in the first stanza, is now made more specific.
She is the whole world and he the supreme ruler of the world. Here is an extravagant conceit, indeed. His tone in speaking to the sun now softens instead of harsh. Let the sun warm the lovers and it will truly be warming the whole world because the lovers are a microcosm of the world. The poet claims that, with a wink of his eyes, he can eclipse and cloud the sun. The beloved who lies in the bed with him is a combination of both the Indies; of spice and mine. She thus represents both the East and the West Indies because of her sweet fragrance and her glitter. As for himself he represents all the kings of the world. The beloved is all the kingdoms of the world, and the poet is all the monarch of the world. If the sun shines on the lover’s bed-room only, and does not travel to other places, it will still be warming the whole world because their bed-room is a microcosm of the whole world. These are all far fetched and fantastic ideas.
The poet and his mistress symbolise the whole world and all its rulers. Those who claim to be the rulers of the world are in fact, merely imitating the lovers. Likewise all honour in the world is a shadow of the true honour which belongs to these lovers, Donne’s tone is colloquial and deliberately irreverential. Words and phrases like motions, India's of spice and mine, all states, alchemy, thy centre, thy sphere have been taken from astronomy and politics. Not only they connect the audience with contemporary scientific attitudes, they give a new orientation to poetic activity. The use of hyperbolic expressions is quite abundant.
The dramatic element in his poems is most immediately apparent in the opening lines. For instance, in The Anniversary, two real characters speak to each other - 'thou and I'. There is no rhetoric and the tone, rhythm and words are of the living speech. Petrarch addressed the sun as 'live giving sun' but Donne adopts the attitude of haughty defiance to the sun in The Sunne Rising. For him the sun is 'Busie old foole untruly sun'.
Samuel Johnson, the 18th C English critic, 'characterised metaphysical poetry as "heterogeneous ideas yoked by violence together-nature and a n are ransacked for illustrations ,comparisons and illusions." Metaphysical Poetry is full of conceits or far-fetched imagery. There are three modes of conceits in this poem - the dialectic, the rhetoric and the witty modes. The dialectic conceit helps to establish the truth (here the superiority of Love), the rhetoric aims at persuasion (persuading the sun at the end to give up its cumbersome labour to journey through the world and instead just shine on the two of them) and the witty mode seeks to blend apparently disparate experiences (where the sun with its astronomical antiquity is equated with human old age and thereby reduced to a subservient role in the context of the man-centred universe).
‘The Sun Rising’ is a witty and amusing poem. It is light verse, but it is also extremely serious. It is, in fact, a good example of the fact that seriousness is different from solemnity and may be accompanied with a good deal of frivolity. This poem also illustrates Donne's revolt against the artificiality and absurdity of the fashionable love poetry of courtly chivalry in which the conceit of the beloved's eyes being regarded as brighter than the sun had long become a tedious formula. Donne laughs at the hyperboles or the fantastic exaggerations of the courtly poetry by pretending to accept- them. Its final objective is to express the poet's feeling of happiness and completeness in the possession of his mistress. She is so all-perfect, all-lovely, all-complete that she, and she alone, justifies the fantastic hyperboles of courtly poetry.
The poet treats the sun familiarly, colloquially, and irreverently. It is one of the paradoxes of the poem that the poet uses the adjective "unruly' for the sun when the sun is really the standard of order, regulation, and law.
"Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?"
The poem begins with a rhetorical arrogant address to the sun. Like many of Donne's poems, this one begins abruptly, with a sharp, surprising colloquial exclamation: 'Busy old fool, unruly Sun.The poet expresses his contempt for the sun by addressing it as "saucy pedantic wretch". The reason for this is that the poet, in his joy at his complete possession of his mistress, feels that he possesses, rules, and controls the whole world, and therefore is superior to the sun itself.
The lovers are indifferent to the rising of the sun because they can go on making love even after the sun n even after the sun has arisen. The lover, further, claims that he can eclipse and darken the sun merely I wink. The lover has only to close his eyes, and the sunlight exists no more for him and the beloved's eyes are so bright that their light can dazzle the sun.
"I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long:"
Usually one is dazzled by the sun's brightness, but here is the reversal of the situation. In the second stanza the poet continues his boastful tone. The lover asks the sun to go and find out whether the East Indies and the West are still situated at their original location or they have moved from there to lie with him in his bed.
"Whether both the" India's of spice and mine
Be where thou lefi'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt here, All here in one bed lay."
The idea is that the beloved who lies in the bed is a combination of both the east and the West Indies. The East Indies were known for their fragrant spices, and the West Indies for their diamond mines. The mistress sums up in herself all the riches and perfumes of the East and the West. She is the glory of the whole world. Also, the setting of the scene, only implied in the first stanza, is now made more specific.
She is the whole world and he the supreme ruler of the world. Here is an extravagant conceit, indeed. His tone in speaking to the sun now softens instead of harsh. Let the sun warm the lovers and it will truly be warming the whole world because the lovers are a microcosm of the world. The poet claims that, with a wink of his eyes, he can eclipse and cloud the sun. The beloved who lies in the bed with him is a combination of both the Indies; of spice and mine. She thus represents both the East and the West Indies because of her sweet fragrance and her glitter. As for himself he represents all the kings of the world. The beloved is all the kingdoms of the world, and the poet is all the monarch of the world. If the sun shines on the lover’s bed-room only, and does not travel to other places, it will still be warming the whole world because their bed-room is a microcosm of the whole world. These are all far fetched and fantastic ideas.
The poet and his mistress symbolise the whole world and all its rulers. Those who claim to be the rulers of the world are in fact, merely imitating the lovers. Likewise all honour in the world is a shadow of the true honour which belongs to these lovers, Donne’s tone is colloquial and deliberately irreverential. Words and phrases like motions, India's of spice and mine, all states, alchemy, thy centre, thy sphere have been taken from astronomy and politics. Not only they connect the audience with contemporary scientific attitudes, they give a new orientation to poetic activity. The use of hyperbolic expressions is quite abundant.
The dramatic element in his poems is most immediately apparent in the opening lines. For instance, in The Anniversary, two real characters speak to each other - 'thou and I'. There is no rhetoric and the tone, rhythm and words are of the living speech. Petrarch addressed the sun as 'live giving sun' but Donne adopts the attitude of haughty defiance to the sun in The Sunne Rising. For him the sun is 'Busie old foole untruly sun'.
Samuel Johnson, the 18th C English critic, 'characterised metaphysical poetry as "heterogeneous ideas yoked by violence together-nature and a n are ransacked for illustrations ,comparisons and illusions." Metaphysical Poetry is full of conceits or far-fetched imagery. There are three modes of conceits in this poem - the dialectic, the rhetoric and the witty modes. The dialectic conceit helps to establish the truth (here the superiority of Love), the rhetoric aims at persuasion (persuading the sun at the end to give up its cumbersome labour to journey through the world and instead just shine on the two of them) and the witty mode seeks to blend apparently disparate experiences (where the sun with its astronomical antiquity is equated with human old age and thereby reduced to a subservient role in the context of the man-centred universe).