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Poetry Commentary on The Sunne Rising by John Donne

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Personification Is a theme throughout the poem, because the speaker is talking to the sun as if he was human being. The poem is a dramatic monologue, because the narrator is speaking to himself and the speaker is not John Done. The speaker in the poem is a man lying in bed and he is angry with the sun as it is interrupting his time with his lover. He addresses the Sun as “Busy old fool, unruly sun” (1. 1). He claims the sun as unruly because, It Is peeping through the bedroom’s windows and curtains and Is disturbing the lovers.

His tone is rather saucy or sassy. Saucy is a coincidental word, because in line 5 he calls the sun a “saucy pedantic wretch,” but he is the one who is being rude y yelling at the sun. The formation of the three stanzas could represent the three times of day: morning, afternoon, and night time. The sun has different positions throughout the day. It wakes people up as It rises; It shines all day, and then signifies bedtime when It sets at night.

The ending rhyme scheme of each stanza follows the pattern BEACHED. A main focus of the poem is the hyperbolic content of it. First, the man is talking to the sun as if it is a conscious human being. Secondly, the speaker says love “No season knows, nor clime,/Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time” (1. ). Lastly, the man claims that his love Is so great that kings and princes from all around the world would envy It. The two lovers In the bedroom are the world.

The speaker states, “Whether both outlandish of spice and mine/ Be where thou left’s them, or lie here with me” (l. 17-18). He is comparing his lover to Indian spices, meaning he has the riches of the world in bed with him instead of where the sun left them, in India. There Is a global sense to the poem since the sun shines across the whole globe everyday. The mention of India Is significant because In the fifteenth European explorers began arriving in the Americas, returning to England with newly found treasures and stories.

During Donna’s lifetime, colonies were established in North and South America, and the riches that flowed back to England dramatically transformed English society. The speaker conveys indifference toward recent voyages of discovery and conquest, preferring to remain In bed with his lover. The comparison of the new lover to the discovery of new land shows that the lover’s body Lastly, the speaker mentions that the sun only has to shine on the two lovers in bed because they comprise of the whole world.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere” second to last line shows that they are they are the only people in the world or that they represent the world and everything that matters is right there in the bed. He claims his lover is all the princes. Acknowledging the sun’s navigation and hard work it does every day to light up the world, he takes grief on the sun and claims the sun now only has to shine on the two lovers bed and he is shining on the whole world. The bed signifies the earth and the spherical room is the sun. They are the center of the universe with the sun as their servant.