Donne’s honesty is in acknowledging this side to being in love, self-satisfaction and all. Who hasn’t felt like that when in love? Arrogant, yes – but all too human. The extended metaphor with which Donne closes ‘The Sun Rising’ – he and his beloved are the whole world because nothing else matters to them as long as they’re in love, so the sun cannot be partnered with the world because Donne and his lover are the world – is unfolded deftly and to great effect. ‘The Sun Rising’ invites close analysis because of such fine details of language and rhyme, and because the imagery is not simply the usual fare. If ‘The Sun Rising’ is a love poem that still resonates with us, it is not simply because of the refreshing detachment (Donne does not praise his beloved directly, but via the intrusive sun) but because Donne is happy to talk about himself at such length. Whether both th’ Indias of spice and mineīe where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.Īlthough Donne is championing his beloved’s beauty, ‘me’ and ‘me’ are here rhymed, and even ‘mine’ is rhymed with ‘thine’, with the pun on ‘mine’ (diamond or gold mines, but given the fact that it’s sandwiched between ‘me’ and ‘me’, we cannot help but get a whiff of the possessive pronoun here) placing Donne at the centre of things. Look at the progress of the endings of these four successive lines: But the rhymes are also a tour de force and worth analysing more closely. The rhythm of ‘The Sun Rising’ is jaunty and alive, suggesting Donne’s arrogant and self-confident challenge of the sun’s primacy and authority. Eliot observed, thought and feeling were united in Donne’s poetry. It’s impossible to be blinded by beauty, of course, but the cleverness of the conceit transforms it from clichéd declaration of love (‘I’m blinded by your beauty’) into something more affecting because, as T. Look at the way he takes the idea of being blinded by staring at the sun and turns it on its head, saying that the sun itself may well be blinded by looking upon the eyes of his beloved – they’re that dazzling and beautiful. (We discuss metaphysical poetry in more detail here.)Īnd Donne’s metaphors are clever. And ‘The Sun Rising’ is a love poem, in which Donne praises his lover, claiming she outstrips all princes and kings in the world, and all the riches to be found in the East and West. It was Samuel Johnson who dubbed John Donne and his successors ‘Metaphysical poets’: poets who often use extended metaphors in their work, sometimes drawn from contemporary scientific and philosophical ideas, to explore familiar themes such as love. Or, as that latter-day poet, Morrissey, once put it in a classic modern love song, ‘Hand in glove, the sun shines out of our behinds’. But the central meaning of ‘The Sun Rising’ is similar to the meaning of ‘The Good-Morrow’, another classic Donne poem: my beloved and I are so in love that the rest of the world is but a poor show compared with us.

Eliot, a great admirer of Donne’s poetry, Donne can make a single image or phrase resonate with half a dozen meanings. The above paraphrase or summary of the content of ‘The Sun Rising’ is necessarily longer than the poem itself, which shows just how much Donne packs into a relatively short poem. This bed on which we lie is the centre of the world, and the walls of this bedroom are the edges of the world’s sphere.’ Shine here, and you shine on everything (or everything that matters). You’re getting old, and since it’s your job to warm the world, you’ve done your job once you’ve warmed us, because, as I say, we are the world. my beloved and I are the world, and sorry, Sun – we’re spoken for). ‘And you, Sun, are only half as happy as we are, in that the world, your natural partner, is already promised to another (i.e. Princes are mere shadows of my beloved and me: next to our love, all honour is a sham, all wealth is like alchemy, a vain attempt to create riches from base metals. Nothing else exists that is worth our attention. ‘My lover is all states and all princes of the world rolled into one – oh yes. This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere. Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere To warm the world, that’s done in warming us. Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be

State of mine curtain call song