John Donne

1. John Donne Metaphysical Poetry By Dr. Zia Ahmed

2. Donne Poetry • Love Poetry: The Sun Rising • Divine Poetry: God the Father

3. Metaphysical • T. S. Eliot and the Term Metaphysical • Metaphysical: Beyond Physical • Metaphysical: • A Conceit • A difficult Image • A far-fetched Comparison • Concrete Juxtaposed with Abstract

4. Some Conceits • Lovers are like Gold thread • Lovers are two hemispheres • Lovers are like High Planets • Lovers are Like two needles of a compass

5. Love Concept of Donne • Beloved is not a goddess • Bodies are the carriers of soul • Meeting of soul and body both • Mundane love seen in terms of divine love • Divine love seen in terms of mundane love • Lover is pure but beloved is not that much in love

6. The Sun Rising • Busy old fool, unruly Sun,Why dost thou thus,Through windows, and through curtains, call onus?Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?Saucy pedantic wretch, go chideLate schoolboys, and sour prentices,Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,Call country ants to harvest offices,Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags oftime.

7. The Sun Rising • Sun is old saucy pedantic wretch who loves to peep into lover’s room • Instead of this disagreeable duty the sun should go and wake up apprentices, kings men or the country side people • Donne says that he can stop the shining rays of the sun if he let’s his beloved look at the sun

8. The Sun Rising • He believes that lover’s worlds is independent of the rags of time so the sun should not interfere in their world. • He lends a super status to himself and his world of love by saying that all spices of the world, kings, princes are inferior to himself. • He advises the sun to limit his activity of the warming the whole macrocosm by just warming the microcosm of his love world.

9. The Sun Rising • Thy beams, so reverend and strongWhy shouldst thou think?I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,But that I would not lose her sight so long:If her eyes have not blinded thine,Look, and tomorrow late, tell meWhether both the'Indias of spice and mineBe where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,And thou shalt hear: 'All here in one bed lay.'

10. The Sun Rising • The walls of the Lover’s Room are the boundaries of the love universe and the bed of the lovers is the center of this universe.

11. Critical Comment • The poem is a typical love poem of John Donne where he assumes that with his beloved and her love he has become the most powerful person of the world. • The comparison between the gaze of the beloved and the gaze of the sun is though difficult but appropriate in metaphysical terms to convey the ideal beauty and power of love of his beloved.

12. The Sun Rising • She'is all states, and all princes I,Nothing else is.Princes do but play us; compar'd to this,All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.Thou, sun, art half as happy'as we,In that the world's contracted thus;Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties beTo warm the world, that's done in warming us.Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere. 

13. Critical Comment • The equation of the lover’s room with that of universe is also complex and very far-fetched. The room therefore represents the universe of love which becomes superior because of the presence of lovers and lover assumes that the whole world is rather a mimic of his world.

14. Conclusion • The Poem is divided into three equal parts having ten lines each • The Rhyme scheme of the lines is abbacdcdee • The poem goes to lend a superior color of love and the power that love lends to a man if he has found true love. The images of Indian spices and kings are relevant to this. • The unique charm is created by presenting an image of the world of lovers as a complete universe.