The Sun Rising

    Let me be blunt.  John Donne is one of the best poets ever.  Maybe I’ll put Robert Browning and Emily Dickinson in his category.  Sure, Frost is good.  I love Rita Dove, what I’ve read of her. Cummings is my hero!  But Donne stuns me.  If your teacher doesn’t like him, punch him or her in the stomach. 


    The core of almost every Donne poem is a conceit , an outlandish or contradictory argument or metaphor.  The fun of reading Donne is to see how he says almost ridiculous things and then makes them seem plausible.

This poem is an aubade, a poem written upon waking up in the sack with one’s beloved.  If there’s a better reason to write a poem, I haven’t found it.  It always helps to figure out the dramatic situation of a poem.  In this case, a guy is lying in bed with his girl, probably trying to convince her that she doesn’t have to leave for whatever she normally does in the morning.

He’s showing off for his girl by yelling at the sun, telling it to go bother people who need to get out of bed. See, he needs to stay in bed with his sweetie. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.


He compliments his girl’s eyes by mocking the sun.  Her eyes are brighter than the sun’s rays, and could blind the sun the way looking straight at it could blind us. 


Then , he starts in on his central conceit, that the whole world and all it’s sovereigns are actually here in his bed.  Note:  Europeans were crazy about the spices and gems imported from India, Ceylon, and the other East Indies. So he’s implying his girl is spicy, exotic and valuable.

See, he just conquered her, invaded her, if you will, so now she’s his whole world and he’s King of the World.  I have a friend who yells, “We’re fun!  Everybody wants to be us!” whenever we take over the dance floor in front of a juke box.  That’s what Donne is saying...”The whole world pretends to be us because they could never feel as honoured or wealthy as I do after making out with my girl!”

It’s only logical, then, if she’s the whole world, that the sun should just hang out with them.  Of course “warm” is a snuggling word for what the sun does.  Notice how he said a lot of really romantic things to his girl without saying anything directly to her.  Also notice, he started the poem by telling the sun to go away, and ended by telling him to stay.  It’s typical Donne.  His brain moves faster than his pen!