The Sun Rising by John Donne

“The Sun Rising” by John Donne is an aubade all about two lovers getting woken up by the sun when all they want to do is lay in bed all day. The entire poem is the speaker, presumably Donne himself, is talking to the sun and telling him to go away. This poem is broken into three stanzas with a rhyme scheme of ABBACDCDEE. Each of those stanzas represents what Donne is telling the sun to do, which is, to go away, I am stronger than you, and that he and his lover are the center of the world. Donne uses diction throughout all three stanzas to make his three points and to give the overall point of the poem, that love is not affected by time.

John Donne uses diction all throughout his poem “The Sun Rising” to emphasize that the sun is not welcome in waking him and is lover. In the beginning of the poem Donne is calling the sun an “old fool” and “unruly”, which shows that he is not grateful for the sun shining through their window and waking them up. He then goes on to tell the sun to go “chide” children going to school who are late and apprentices who have overslept and are “sour” about it. The sun should be an indication to the huntsmen that the king will want go out and ride and the sun will also indicate to the “ants” that it is a good day to harvest their crops. The sun should not be waking up the lovers, because love does not change with the rising of the sun or the change of the seasons. Donne ends the stanza saying that love does not know what time is. Donne classifies time as the “rags of time”.

The second stanza starts with Donne accusing the sun of thinking that its rays are so “reverend” and “strong” and then says why would anyone think that this is true. He goes on to say that he “could eclipse and cloud them with a win...

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...ote, for the sun is seem most often as a happy symbol and to Donne they are happier than the sun. The next line tells why they are happier than the sun, “in that the world’s contracted thus”, the world, in their mind, is in their bedroom and they do not have to hurry off someone like when others have to in the real world. Donne then claims that the sun has other duties to go warm the world, but since the world is his room the sun only has to warm them and then be done. The very last two lines wrap up his argument of him and his lover being the center of the world. He begs the sun to stay and warm them up and everywhere else, instead of going away like he wanted the sun to do in the first stanza. The last line of the stanza and poem, “this bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere”, confirms that Donne thinks he is the center of not only the world but the universe.