The Sun Rising

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1633

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Time and Eternity

The poem contrasts time, represented by the sun, and the condition of eternity, in which the two lovers live. This is most apparent in Stanza 1. In Line 4, the speaker implies that the “seasons” of lovers are not governed by the movements of the sun, which mark the passage of time. He takes up and clarifies the same thought in Line 9. It turns out that lovers have no seasons; they are not subject to the laws of time and change, but create their own world operating under entirely different conditions. They live in a kind of eternal present so their love cannot be measured in “hours, days, months, which are the rags of time” (Line 10). Their love belongs to an altogether different category, and the use of the word “rags” (Line 10) to characterize time suggests the inadequacy, even the shabbiness, of time as compared to the pristine, timeless world inhabited by the lovers. This is one reason the speaker has such a mocking manner to the sun: Because the sun is the measure of time, it cannot know the eternity in which the lovers live, and therefore can be treated with less respect than the lovers upon whom it shines.

The Vastness, Exclusiveness, and Self-Sufficiency of Love

The poet expresses a highly exalted view of love. His feelings literally know no bounds. In the vastness of their expanded being, attained through love, he and his lover encompass everything in creation. This is explicitly stated in Stanza 3, in which the lovers together are presented as all the nations and princes of the world (Line 21). Nothing surpasses them because “[n]othing else is” (Line 22). If the sun does its job of warming the world, the speaker says, all it has to do is shine on them in their bed, in which case the sun would be “everywhere” (Line 29), since they contain everything within themselves.

Readers will recognize that Donne is indulging in a splendid piece of hyperbole, but he captures a feeling that may well be known by people experiencing the intoxication of romantic love. Sometimes people in love (especially when the love is new) entirely focus on each other to the exclusion of all else. It seems to them that they constitute a world of their own, to which no one else has access—like the lovers in the poem. The expansive nature of the feeling aroused by romantic love can also create feelings of bliss that seem to fill the heavens, and make the lovers feel as if they are living in a transfigured universe entirely belonging to them (as Donne does in the poem). Because of their love, they are complete and need nothing from outside to make them whole; they cannot imagine a time in which this would not be so. Others may scoff or wonder, but the lovers know, and they will not be otherwise convinced. All of nature, including the sun, is in service to them. Through each other’s love, they embody a higher dimension that puts to shame all the things the world considers most valuable, such as riches and royalty. It is superior to all those things (once again, as Donne says). Hyperbole notwithstanding, there is a authenticity in the poet’s exuberant celebration of love, and readers will likely recognize in it one of the most elevated of all human experiences.

The Reversal of Power, Authority, and Control

In playful, colloquial, and belligerent style, Donne upends and reverses the normal power relations between himself--as a man--and the entire universe. Instead of being a small mortal creature, subject to the unshakeable order and power of the cosmos—symbolized by the sun—Donne takes control of everything. He treats the sun with withering disdain when it peeks into his bedroom early one morning (Stanza 1). The sun is hardly a worthy adversary, since the speaker has been transformed into a different dimension and power has been passed to him. He uses all the wit at his disposal to diminish the sun. The sun may pride itself on its beams, “so reverend and strong” (Line 11), but it has forgotten one thing: He can “eclipse and cloud them with a wink” (Line 13). More importantly, the speaker has something even the sun cannot match: true love with a woman whose beauty is unsurpassed by anything the sun might see on its daily travels across the sky. The poet thus dethrones the sun and replaces it with his own mighty consciousness, enlivened to its full potential by love, as the true source of power in the universe.

Finally, in Stanza 3, having hectored and lectured a formerly powerful adversary who can only ever be “half as happy as [the lovers]” (Line 25) and shown it who is really in charge, he softens. As the victor, he can afford to show some magnanimity. Unlike in Stanza 1, the sun is no longer a tyrant or a nuisance, but is in dutiful service to the lovers. The lovers are now the center of power, and the sun obediently follows the new law the speaker has determined where its beams must shine. Thus, Donne successfully used extravagant hyperbole to affirm the power of love as the supreme value in creation.