Donne: The Sun Rising

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Paying close attention to language, tone and action, write a critical appreciation of ‘The Sun Rising’. In order to unpack the methodology of Donne’s love poems, it is necessary first of all to expound on his concept of love. Quite contrary to the poetry of his day, Donne postulates that love may not only be of divine or lofty conception but, in his estimation, truly seen in the combination of carnal enjoyment of ‘country pleasures’ a la ‘The Flea’ to intangibles seen in heavenly realms of angels and heavenly bodies. Therefore, ‘The Sun Rising’ may be the quintessential definition of true or perfect love. That said, it can now be noted that Donne argues his point through the metaphysical conceit, which evidently, he is the foremost exponent of. Therein, he utilises the most preposterous, exaggerated and non complimentary metaphors to unfold –often playfully- his concept of love. The argument itself then become so explosive that it quite unexpectedly implodes within itself…which quite ironically is the intention of the author. Quite literally, ‘The Sun Rising’ relates the preposterous metaphor of the sun to the love (inclusive of both lovemaking and the feelings of the lovers) shared by the personae in the poem. The speaker seems to chastise the sun for rising and thereby interrupting or bringing to end their time together. He then goes into an apostrophe when he speaks to the sun as a rival entity, commanding it (obviously playfully) to do anything but interrupt them. In the end, unable to chase away the sun, he facetiously commands it to shine only on the lovers even as it shines everywhere. The lyricism of the poem is evident from the outset. There are three stanzas of ten lines each which are made up of iambic dimeter, followed by iambic tetrameter, and then the customary iambic pentameter. The rhyme sequence follows a perversion of the Petrarchan sonnet which
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