The Sun Rising

STRUCTURE

  • 3 ten-line stanzas

RHYMING SCHEME

  • ABBA CDCD EE

THEMES

  • Love

Variant of the aubade, a mourning love song about two lovers being forced to separate at dawn

QUOTES

  • “Busy old fool, unruly Sun/ Why dost thou thus/ Through windows and through curtains call on us?”

  • “Saucy pedantic wretch”

  • “go chide/ Late 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 of time”

  • “Look and tomorrow late, tell me/ Whether both th’Indias of spice and mine/ Be where thou left’st them or lie with me”

  • “She’s all stated, and all princes I/ Nothing else is./ Princes do not but play us; compared 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 be/ To 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”