Fantastic and Hyperbolic in John Donne

 The Sun Rising by John Donne

Pleasure is the chief end of all great literature. If a piece of literature fails to please, it is never a great literature. Among all the classics, Donne is one such writer who never fails to please his readers through his poetry. On the surface, the fountain-house of pleasure is love of fantastic and hyperbolic, but on unearthing deep in the mines of his intellect, his readers discover that it is self-knowledge and ‘proper study of man’ which pleases like nothing.

All good literature describes life, but only great literature fashions life. On studying Donne’s poetry, people come to imagine how they should love and hate, how they should treat their mistresses and wives, how they should rejoice and mourn, how they should love temporary and eternal—what status should have earthly and divine in human scheme of things.

The Sun Rising is one of the many powerful love poems which came out of Donne’s mind. In this poem, the poet sums up his reactions when his love game is disturbed by the sun whose reverend and powerful rays through windows and curtains tell the poet that he should pay attention to other duties of life as well. Here is the poem and very brief explanation to understand this poem.

The narrator is unhappy with the sun and addresses the sun as an old, busy, unruly fool as the latter is disturbing the lovers, who are enjoying each other, by casting its rays through windows and curtains. The narrator further asks the sun if it is necessary that lovers need to obey his routine and schedule. Instead the sun should take care of children and other unwilling and bored learners who are late for their school and workplace. Or the sun should go and inform the court huntsmen who are to accompany the king on his hunting campaign. More, the sun should wake the country ants that are to gather their food and supplies. As far as the poet and his beloved are concerned, the sun should spare them because love and lovers are not governed by time: they are independent of time and change. The narrator declares hours, days and months rags of time.

The narrator asks the sun why the sun thinks that his rays are very overwhelming and powerful—the sun will get eclipsed only if the narrator closed his eye, however, he will not do so as he does not want to take his eyes away from the beauty of his beloved. He goes on in the same vain boast and tells the sun if the sun does not become blind after the latter has encountered the strong eyes of his beloved, he should go and circle the whole world and then come back to him to whether both east India—famous for its spices, and the west India—known for its mines, all are not lying in the narrator’s room—in the guise of the two lovers. More, whether all the kings, the sun saw yesterday as he went round the world, are not lying in the narrator’s room—narrator and his beloved.

The narrator declares to the sun that his beloved is another being for all the kingdoms of the world, and he is as great as all the kings of the world put together. They are real and all other things are fake; they are significant and everything else is insignificant. In king versus kingdom, they are the real prototypes and all others are mere copies; they enjoy the real honor and they have the real wealth—everything else is mimicry and alchemy—false things. The narrator does not stop here and announces that the sun is half happy as they are because they are whole thing contracted in a small room. The sun has become old and his old age demands that he should take things easy, is the next level of argument developed by the narrator. Now he tells the sun how this could be made possible. Since the narrator and his beloved are the whole world and the duty of the sun is to keep the whole world warm, the sun could perform his duty by warming the lovers. The final advice of the narrator to the sun is to circle round the room where lovers are and not to go beyond the four walls of that room.