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Title: John Donne- The Sun Rising Context and Analysis
Description: An analysis in detail of John Donne's "The Sun Rising" from an English A Level Course
Description: An analysis in detail of John Donne's "The Sun Rising" from an English A Level Course
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The Sun Rising
Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys, and sour prentices
...
Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why should’st thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long:
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me
Whether both the Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou lefst them, or lie here with me
...
She is all States, and all Princes I,
Nothing else is:
Princes do but play us; compar’d to this,
All honour’s mimic, all wealth alchemy
...
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere,
This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere
...
John and Anne had settled in Purford, Surrey
...
Rhyme scheme is ABBACDCCEE
Stanza One
“Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?”
Donne’s biographer, John Stubbs, claimed that this poem was an indirect attack on Sir
George More
...
The questions Donne asks shows a debate between them
...
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys, and sour prentices
...
There love is
out of real time
...
The ‘motions’ referred to is the rise and setting of the sun
...
”
Time is personified here to show that Donne and his lover will not be slaves to time
...
Their love stays the same, no
matter what changes in the world
...
His ‘eclipse’ shows his
position of power over the sun
...
Donne gives himself power- he would not close his
eyes because he would not see his love for even a second
...
“If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me
Whether both the Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou lefst them, or lie here with me
...
Here, we are presented with geographical imagery of the West
Indies (islands of the Caribbean) and of the East Indies (India)
...
“Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear: ‘All here in one bed lay’
...
Their love has placed them where they belong- everything must reorientate itself around
them
...
”
Donne uses hyperbole here to show that she is the countries and he is their ruler
...
Nothing compares to the realness of their love
...
Power,
honour and money all seem like false happiness beside their joy as two lovers
...
”
The sun can only shine over half the world at a time, but they are the world
...
There is a tonal shift here as
Donne is more gentle and appreciative of the sun
...
“Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere,
This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere
...
The reference to the ‘sphere’
comes from the old Ptolemaic cosmology (disproved by Galileo and Copernicus) in which the
sun went around the earth
...
Sir George More wrote a tract
against heliocentric theory
Title: John Donne- The Sun Rising Context and Analysis
Description: An analysis in detail of John Donne's "The Sun Rising" from an English A Level Course
Description: An analysis in detail of John Donne's "The Sun Rising" from an English A Level Course