The Sun Rising by John Donne: Summary

The Sun Rising originally spelled as The Sunne Rising is one of the best known poems of John Donne published in 1633. The sun is addressed in a rhetorical manner in this poem by the speaker.

As most often his poems have dramatic setting, this poem too has a dramatic situation where the speaker gets angry with the rising sun and tells the sun not to disturb him and his beloved in making love.  

In the opening of the poem, in the morning when the sun peeps through the window, the speaker in an annoyed mood asks the sun why he is disturbing them. The speaker then tells him instead of troubling them, he can rush the school boy, order the ants for the business and the court huntsman about the king’s ride. The lover claims that their love knows no season, no months, no hours and no time. Time is the enemy for the lovers and they exceed the time.

In stanza two, he doubts on the strength of the sun asking him if its beams are strong. He further says he can easily eclipse the sun beams by his winks, but he would not do because in doing so he would also miss the sight of his beloved. The speaker goes on rebuking the sun and tells him if he is dazzled by her beauty, go and set and come another day with the news about the kings, queens, riches of the world, and the Indian spices. The speaker in the last lines of the second stanza confirms that all the riches and the beauty of the world lie beside him in his bed being his beloved. 

In the last stanza, the speaker starts praising his beloved asserting that she is his world and when they are together they are in their own realm of the ecstasy. The speaker firmly says that he is like a king as he possesses the beauty and true love of his beloved. For him, all the honors and the wealth are nothing in comparison of his beloved. Pitying on the sun, the speaker says the sun is fully not happy as the loving couple is, since its job is to keep the world warm, and in its old age it wants the easier work, so all it has to do is to shine on the speaker's bed where his beloved is lying. This way his job is easily fulfilled as for the speaker his beloved is the world and by shining on the bed it is shining on the whole world. Their bed is the center of the world and the walls of the room is the edges of the world.

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Shrestha, Roma. "The Sun Rising by John Donne: Summary." BachelorandMaster, 6 March. 2018, https://www.bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/the-sun-rising-summary.html.