Contracted Thus: Donne’s ‘The Sunne Rising’

Abstract

The poem explodes into fiercely rhetorical argument, pursued through three stanzas of sustained exaltation. First the sun is rebuked as a kind of elderly voyeur; then sent about his business; then accused of vanity; then dispatched (unsuccessfully) to look for ‘both the’India’s’. Finally contempt gives way to patronage, and the sun is invited to perform his duties with the inertia more fitted to age, standing still.