NON —AFRICAN POETRY Discuss the changing mood of the poet in "The Sun Rising"

Answer Details

John Donne's The Sun Rising is a dramatic monologue addressed to the sun, and one of its chief pleasures is the way the speaker's mood changes as the poem develops, moving from irritation through mockery to triumphant contentment.

Opening mood: annoyance and rebuke. The poem begins in anger. The lover, lying in bed with his beloved at dawn, is disturbed by the sunlight and scolds the sun as a busy old fool and an unruly, saucy wretch for intruding on the lovers. His tone is impatient and contemptuous. He asks why the sun must call them, demanding that it go instead and trouble late schoolboys, apprentices, court huntsmen and farmers, whose lives are ruled by time.

Middle mood: mockery and defiance. The speaker's mood shifts to confident mockery. He belittles the sun's supposed power, boasting that he could eclipse its beams with a wink, except that he would lose sight of his beloved for a moment. He challenges the sun to travel the world and return to report that the kings and treasures of the East and West Indies are all here, in this very bed. Love, he claims, is not subject to the seasons, days or hours that the sun measures.

Closing mood: triumph and serene joy. The final stanza rises to exultant contentment. The lovers become the whole world: she is all states and he all princes, and nothing else exists. In an act of generous condescension the speaker now pities the aged sun and even invites it to stay, arguing that since the lovers are the world, warming them is the same as warming everywhere. The angry rebuke of the opening has become a calm, self-satisfied welcome.

The poet's mood therefore evolves from irritation at the intruding sun, through witty defiance of its power, to a triumphant peace in which love conquers time and the whole universe shrinks to the lovers' bedroom.