Judging by the title of John Donne's "The Sun Rising," the poem appears to be an
ode to the morning sun. As soon as the first line is read, it is apparent that this is not so. Donne
mocks the sun, calling it a "Busy old fool, unruly." Beleaguered, Donne asks why it woke him and his lover ("Why dost thou thus/Through windows, and through curtains call on us?"). He continues to
ridicule the sun, offering several alternative activities for it (ll. 5-8).
In lines 9-10 it is evident what the poem is truly about. Donne proclaims love as free from temporal bounds ("Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,/Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time"). The poem is a bold declaration of love's power, which nature, in the form of the sun, cannot harm. Donne feigns praise for the sun's "reverend and strong" beams, then belittles the sun by saying how easily he can shut them out merely by closing his eyes ("I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink").
However, he will not, for fear of losing sight of his lover for even a moment ("But that I would not lose her sight so long:"). Although Donne adulates his partner ("If her eyes have not blinded thine"), he does not glorify her. The poem is about love, not his lover. He compares the wealth of India with the riches in his room (ll. 17-18). Donne believes love is everywhere ("She's all states, and all princes, I,/Nothing else is.") and overwhelms honor and wealth, as they are false ("mimic," "alchemy") compared to it.
The sun cannot achieve happiness like the two lovers can ("Thou, sun, art half as happy as we") because it is incapable of love. Its powers are limited "to warm the world, that's done in warming us." Donne ends in a conciliatory tone, superimposing the imagery of the sun's brightness with love's reach ("Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;"). He continues further, likening the sun's spherical shape to the walls of his room, with his bed at the center. This image of a perfect, infinite shape alludes to love's perpetual supreme power.