Summary of the sun rising

Summary of the sun rising

1. St Xavier’s College, Mahuadanr
Summary of the Poem “The Sun Rising” By John Donne.
“The Sun Rising” is a poem written by the English poet John Donne, published
after his death in 1633, in the collection “Songs and Sonnets.” The poem’s playful use of
language and extended metaphor exemplifies Donne’s style across his work- erotic and
religious alike.
Summary:
The Sun Rising is a love poem set in the speaker’s bedroom where he and his
lover lay in bed after a night of passion. The Sun is seen as an unwanted dawn, invading
the couple’s space and so the speaker orders the Sun to warm his bed so that he and his
lover can stay there all day instead of getting up to go to work.
Laying in bed with his lover the speaker rebukes the rising sun calling it a “busy
old fool” and asking why it must bother them through the windows and curtains. The
speaker admonishes the Sun to go and bother others because for him love is no subject
to season or time. Love in all its forms is above the influence of season and whether. It is
also above the influence of hours, days and month which wear out like old rags as the
time passes.
Why should the Sun think that his beams are strong? The speaker says that he
could eclipse (block) them simply by closing his eyes but he does not want to lose sight
of his beloved for even a moment. So he asks the Sun to tell him if his eyes have not
been blinded by his lover’s eyes by late tomorrow. Weather the treasures of the world
are in the same place that they occupied yesterday or are they with the speaker on the
bed. He asks the sun to see the kings he saw yesterday and you will hear that they are all
lying here in this bed.
The speaker explains his claim by saying that his beloved is like every country in
the world and he is like every king. Nothing else is real compared to their love. All
honor is a cheap copy and all wealth is a futile attempt to attain riches. The speaker says

2. that the Sun is half as happy as he and his lover are because the whole world fits here in
the bedroom.
He says to the Sun that this makes your job much easier in your old age, because
your job is to keep the world warm. So you can do your job by keeping us warm by
shining here on us you can shine everywhere; this bed is your centre and the bedroom
walls are outside boundaries of the solar system. To the man in love the bedroom can
same to enclose all the matters in the world. The inspiration of this poem is to pretend
that each of the subjective (personal) states of feeling is an objective truth.
Form:
The three stanzas of “The Sun Rising” are each ten lines long and follow a line-stress
pattern of 4255445555, with irregular line length and regular rhyme scheme of
ABBACDCDEE.
Lines one, five, and six are metered in iambic tetrameter, line two is in diameter, and
lines three, four, and seven to ten are in pentameter.
Syntax
This poem with its Short, sharp clauses, longer sentences and plenty of punctuation
brings energy and emotion to the speaker's voice, and helps to deliver the arguments
and images in a dramatic and profound manner.
Tone
The speaker is initially upset by the presence of the sun and wastes no time in rebuking
the invasion, questioning its appearance at a time when love is the priority, and love is
not to be influenced or regulated by the course of a pedant.
In the end the lovers and, more importantly, the bed in the room, become the
focal point of the cosmos, around which everything revolves, even the unruly sun.