donne et commentary...

I was never 100% sure how I felt about John Donne. It seems like his poems are just about split down the middle with ecstatic and erotic revelry one the one hand (mostly written in his youth) and frighteningly devout, complex metaphysical verse on the other. That seems like the most compelling thing about Donne - he's part philosopher and part romantic, part profound and part inspiring. I get the feeling that if there were more preachers like him around I might consider joining some religion or another.

"The Sun Rising" lands on the bacchic side of Donne's works, an apostrophic address to the sun to the effect of "go tell someone who's interested it's morning. My lover is the only sun I need" (except the speaker manages to call the sun a "saucy pedantic wretch," which, besides being a really cool line, emphasizes the dismissive tone of the piece). Beyond that, however, Donne seems to be sending a powerful message about the transcendental nature of love - transcending time, worldly affairs, drones in "harvest offices." The outside world need not exist to the speaker, because he's in love and his lover is with him. Moreover, the sun is "half as happy" as the speaker, since the sun has no lover. Donne's words echo age-old and still prevalent sentiment; he doesn't see much value in office-life or day to day affairs, but instead puts value on what inspires, on what makes it seem like time has stopped and what makes him feel like this moment is the only thing that matters.

There will always be a soft spot for this kind of poem; it shows the romantic side of an intellectual (albeit horny) poet. Call it sappy, call it the verse version of a chick flick. It's a romantic piece from a pre-romantic period, and there's a lot packed into it (as one might expect from Donne). I think it's pretty damn cool. But that's just my two cents.