The Sun Rising

“The Sun Rising” is a lyric love poem by John Donne, who was the leading figure in a group of English 17th century poets known as the metaphysical poets. Donne, who later became an Anglican clergyman, wrote in the late Elizabethan and the Jacobean Age. “The Sun Rising” was first published in 1633, two years after Donne’s death, in Poems, by J. D. with Elegies on the Author’s Death. This was the first collected edition of Donne’s verse. The date the poem was written is unknown, as only seven of Donne’s poems were published during his lifetime. Scholars believe Donne wrote most of his many love poems when he was in his 20s, but this one must be slightly later, since it refers to King James I who ascended the throne in 1603, by which time Donne was in his early 30s. “The Sun Rising” is a playful yet serious poem in which the speaker directly addresses the sun in colloquial terms and employs witty conceits (elaborate metaphors) and hyperbole (exaggeration) to convey the depth and all-encompassing nature of the love he shares with his lady.

Poet Biography

Some sources give John Donne’s date of birth as January 22, 1572, but according to others, the exact date of birth is unknown. It would, however, have been sometime between January and June 1572 in London. Donne was the third of six children. His father, John Donne, was a merchant, and his mother Elizabeth was from a prominent Roman Catholic family. Donne’s father died when his son was four, and his mother remarried a wealthy widower. In 1584, Donne matriculated from Hart Hall, Oxford, and likely attended Cambridge University. By this time, he had started writing poetry, and over the years his verse circulated in manuscript form.

In 1592, Donne was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in London to study law, and after receiving an inheritance from his father’s estate, he lived in affluence during the mid-1590s, reading widely and traveling. At some point in the 1590s, he abandoned Catholicism. In 1596, he joined the English naval expedition that captured Cadiz, Spain. A year later, seeking a diplomatic career, Donne became secretary to Sir Thomas Edgerton, and in 1601 he secretly married 17-year-old Ann More, whom he had met in 1598. Ann was Lady Edgerton’s niece, and unfortunately for Donne, the family disapproved of the marriage. Donne was dismissed from his job and imprisoned. Soon released from prison, and with the legality of his marriage ratified, Donne and his wife lived in Pyrford, Surrey, where their first child was born in 1603. Over the next 14 years--until Ann’s death in 1617--the couple had 12 children, two of whom were stillborn, and three of whom died before they were 10.

In 1605, Donne and his family moved to Mitcham--near London--and later he also took lodgings in the Strand, London. He continued to write, and in 1610 published Pseudo-Martyr, an anti-Catholic prose work that gained him the favor of King James I, who acceded to the throne in 1603. The 474-line An Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary--one of the few poems by Donne that were published during his lifetime--appeared in 1611. The poem exhibited a more somber, religious tone than the love poetry of Donne’s earlier years, and it showed the direction his future verse would take.

Three years later, Donne became Member of Parliament for Taunton, and in 1615 he was ordained a priest of the Church of England. He was appointed a royal chaplain, and in 1616 he preached at the court of James I. He developed a reputation for the brilliance of his sermons, and in 1621 he was appointed Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. During a serious illness he wrote a prose work, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, which was published in 1624. One of the Devotions (the 17th) includes the famous phrases “no man is an island” and “for whom the bell tolls.” Regarding the latter, the full text, with Donne’s spelling, is: “Any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”

Donne died on March 31, 1631 after a lengthy illness, likely stomach cancer. His poems were posthumously published in 1633; by 1669, a total of seven editions were printed.

Poem Text

Busy old fool, unruly sun,

               Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?

               Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

               Late school boys and sour prentices,

         Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,

         Call country ants to harvest offices,

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

               Thy beams, so reverend and strong

               Why shouldst thou think?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,

But that I would not lose her sight so long;

               If her eyes have not blinded thine,

               Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,

         Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine

         Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.

Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,

And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

               She's all states, and all princes, I,

               Nothing else is.

Princes do but play us; compared to this,

All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.

               Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,

               In that the world's contracted thus.

         Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be

         To warm the world, that's done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;

This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

Donne, John. “The Sun Rising.” Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The poem consists of three 10-line stanzas. In stanza 1, the speaker colloquially addresses the sun. He chides it for peeping through the curtains and window and disturbing him and his lover (Lines 1-4). He lists some other tasks that the sun could be doing instead: It should admonish boys who are late for school or apprentices who are slow to get moving (Line 6). The sun could also tell huntsmen at the court that the king is about to ride (Line 7), and summon farmers to their daily autumn tasks (at harvest time) (Line 8). In contrast (Lines 9-10), the speaker states love is not bound to time and the passage of hours, days, or months.

Stanza 2 continues the address to the sun. In Lines 11-13, the speaker tells the sun that it is not as powerful as it thinks. The speaker could obscure the sun’s light just by closing his eyes for a moment. In Line 14, though, he says he would not want to do that because he does not want to lose sight of his beloved. In Lines 15-18, he tells the sun that if it is not blinded by the light that shines from his beloved’s eyes, it can tell him whether the treasures of both the East and West Indies remain where it last saw them or whether they now lie in bed with him in the form of his lover. The speaker concludes the stanza by telling the sun that all the kings it saw the day before are now lying in this one bed (implying the richness and majesty of the love he and his beloved share).

Stanza 3 assigns an exalted status to the speaker and his lover: She contains all the countries of the world, and he is all the princes. Nothing else exists (Lines 21-22). All the princes are just play-acting; compared to their love, the honor accorded to princes is just an imitation and their wealth is but a pretense (Lines 23-24). In Line 25, the speaker returns to directly addressing the sun, saying that it is only half as happy as the two lovers (because the sun is a single entity, whereas the lovers are two and can enjoy each other’s love). In Line 27, the speaker says that since the sun’s task is to warm the world, it has done that job when it warms the lovers, since they constitute an entire world. If the sun shines on them, it is shining everywhere, as the lover’s bedroom is all that exists.