The Sunne Rising (Leaving Cert English): Revision Notes

The Sunne Rising

Overview and summary

"The Sunne Rising" presents a lover's daring confrontation with the morning sun that dares to interrupt his time with his beloved. This metaphysical poem showcases Donne's signature wit and intellectual complexity as the speaker directly addresses the sun as an unwelcome intruder into the lovers' bedroom.

The poem begins with frustrated questioning and mockery, suggesting the sun should bother others instead of the lovers. However, as the poem develops, the speaker's argument transforms dramatically from defensive to triumphant. By the end, he declares that his beloved contains the wealth of entire nations, that their love transcends time and geography, and ultimately that their bed becomes the centre of the universe itself.

Through this bold reversal, the lover claims that the sun should revolve around them rather than disturbing their perfect union. This transformation from complaint to cosmic authority demonstrates Donne's key function of elevating personal love to universal significance.

Structure and form

Donne creatively stretches the traditional sonnet format by expanding it into a 30-line poem divided into three sections of ten lines each. While each section concludes with a neat couplet similar to a sonnet's ending, the additional lines provide Donne with extra space to develop his complex thoughts and arguments.

The rhyme pattern Donne employs creates an intriguing mixture of old and new styles, following an ABBACCDCDEE scheme. This pattern begins with elements reminiscent of the Italian sonnet style and concludes with nods to the English sonnet tradition. This combination helps bridge personal intimate moments with cosmic themes.

For the metre, Donne primarily uses iambic pentameter, the traditional rhythm of sonnets. However, he strategically incorporates shorter lines at specific points, particularly in lines 1, 2, 5, and 6 of each stanza. These variations aren't random - they appear precisely when the speaker is questioning the sun's authority or expressing particular scorn. The variations include shifts to iambic dimeter and tetrameter, creating rhythmic emphasis that enhances the poem's emotional impact.

Analysis, stanza by stanza

Stanza one

The opening stanza immediately establishes the poem's confrontational tone through personification, as the sun becomes an "unruly" and "busy old fool." The speaker's irritation is evident as he questions why the sun must call to them "through windows, and through curtains" and asks whether the sun must interfere with "lovers' seasons."

The speaker then suggests alternative activities for the sun, telling it to "Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride" or "Call country ants to harvest offices." These suggestions reveal the speaker's attitude towards conventional daily activities and social obligations.

The stanza concludes with a crucial declaration: "Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time." This establishes that love transcends temporal boundaries and should not be subject to the sun's daily schedule.

Stanza two

The second stanza shows the speaker's growing confidence as he addresses the sun's "beams, so reverend and strong" and asks "Why shouldst thou think?" The speaker then makes a bold claim: "I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink, But that I would not lose her sight so long."

This section reveals the narrator's desire to shut the sun out of existence entirely. However, now that the speaker can see the person he spent the night with, he no longer wants to close his eyes and miss seeing her. The remainder of this stanza questions the value of leaving a bed shared with a loved one, referencing the "Indies of spice and mine" - the Eastern and Western Indies' spice trading and mining operations during Donne's time.

The speaker argues that all worldly wealth and activities will continue exactly as they should whether the lovers leave their bed or not, since these activities are currently meaningless compared to what they share.

Stanza three

The final stanza presents the poem's most audacious claims as the speaker declares: "She's all states, and all princes, I, Nothing else is." This verse emphasises the enormous importance the narrator places on his lover.

Honour and wealth become meaningless when compared to their relationship. Princes appear poor in comparison to what the lovers possess. The poem concludes on a transformative note, suggesting that the narrator's universe consists of only two people and one room - their bed serves as the centre of the universe, with the room's walls forming its boundaries.

Historical context

John Donne lived during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in London, England. Born into a reasonably well-off family, he faced financial struggles after his father's death during his youth. Raised as a Roman Catholic in a time when the Anglican Church maintained significant influence, Donne began what appeared to be a promising political career.

However, his political prospects were dramatically altered when he fell in love with and secretly married Anne More near the end of 1601. When her uncle and father, both prominent government members, discovered the marriage, they had John arrested along with the minister who had performed the ceremony. Although the marriage was eventually validated and both were released, Donne lost his position and ultimately became a cleric in the Church of England.

During their marriage, John and Anne had twelve children together, though the last was stillborn following a difficult pregnancy that also claimed Anne More's life. Historical records indicate that John Donne loved his wife profoundly, making it reasonable to consider her as the woman featured in this poem.

Major themes

The authority of love

Throughout "The Sun Rising," the speaker attempts to bend the rules of the universe to serve love's purposes. Rather than allowing the sun's natural "motions" across the sky to govern how the speaker spends his time, he challenges the sun's authority and claims that love gives him the power to stay in bed all day with his lover.

From the opening lines, the speaker diminishes the sun's authority, describing it as a "busy old fool" and "unruly." This language suggests the sun is not only foolish but also deserving of being "ruled" by some greater authority. The speaker concedes that the sun may rule over "late school boys" and various other groups, but claims that he could easily "eclipse and cloud" the sun simply by closing his eyes.

By the third stanza, the speaker goes beyond merely giving the sun orders - he's actually ordering the sun to serve the lovers by warming them in their bed. The lovers thus become the greater authority that the sun ought to obey. The speaker asks early on, "Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?" This rhetorical question suggests that lovers' "seasons" should be exempt from daily rhythms dictated by the sun.

Love as a microcosm of the universe

Like much of Donne's poetry, "The Sun Rising" uses metaphor to compress the entire world into a small space. This technique draws from the Renaissance concept of "microcosm" - the popular belief that the human body served as a small-scale model of the whole universe.

The speaker claims that "to warm the world" is equivalent to "warming us," transforming himself into a kind of ruler of the world and centre of the universe. Love in the poem becomes so expansive that the universe itself exists within the relationship between the two lovers.

The speaker uses extended metaphor not only to compare his bed to an empire but also to annexe all of the world's empires into his own bed. In the second stanza, the speaker demands that the sun look for "both th' Indias of spice and mine" - referencing the East Indies and West Indies, both colonised by European nations by Donne's time.

The speaker continues by claiming that these sources of imperial wealth and power now "lie here with me," meaning they have been incorporated into the body of the speaker's lover. Rather than meaning the bed is literally full of kings, this suggests that the kings and the power they represent have all been incorporated into the speaker.

Love and divinity

The speaker's inflation of his importance in relation to political rulers is reinforced by a playfully bold insinuation that to wake up in bed with a lover is analogous to an ascent to divine power. Waking up to your beloved can make you feel godlike in your happiness and power.

Additionally, the speaker calls into question the idea that the sun's beams are "reverend," or worthy of being worshipped like God. While earthly kings must still kneel before the sun because it represents one of the few things God doesn't place under their control, the speaker manages to transform the sun into a servant that kneels before him.

The poem's title creates further connections to Christ upon his resurrection. Although the sun is explicitly the one who is "rising" according to the title, the entire poem meditates on the speaker's imperative to rise from bed. Because of this double "rising," the speaker might be said to be a second "sun rising."

This similarity supports the notion that when the speaker wakes up in bed with his lover, he is experiencing a kind of divine resurrection that grants him new Christ-like sovereignty over kings, time, and nature. Love, sexuality, and religion intertwine throughout much of Donne's poetry. In this poem, love and sex are not only as powerful as religious devotion but also forge an incredible intimacy between the lover and God.