A Poem Where Time Gets Cancelled, Science Gets Flirted With, and the Sun Is Just a Nosy Boomer
ABS Believes:
Some mornings, love doesn’t rise with the sun—it tells it to shut the blinds.
Donne didn’t just defy nature—he metaphorically slapped it with a silk bedsheet.
Donne: The Metaphysical Flirt Who Made Suns Nervous
John Donne was that rare poetic breed who mixed philosophy with pillow talk, astronomy with anatomy, and theology with the thrilling awkwardness of a morning after.
In The Sun Rising, he speaks not to his lover but to an ancient, burning celestial body—and lectures it like it’s an overly punctual landlord.
Stanza One: “Old Foolish Sun”—The Ultimate Romantic Rant
“Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?”
Let’s pause here. The poet wakes up in the arms of love, sees sunlight filtering through the curtain, and reacts not with poetic awe but grievance. That’s peak Donne.
The Sun is “busy” (read: nosy), “old” (read: retire, grandpa), and “unruly” (read: no manners). This is not astronomy. This is poetic HR filing a complaint.
“Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?”
Translation: Just because the rest of the world works on a solar schedule doesn’t mean lovers have to. We operate on divine detachment.
“Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.”
This line is so good, it deserves a frame and a dramatic reading at every wedding.
Donne isn’t rejecting the sun—he’s rejecting time itself. Seasons are a scam. Calendars are capitalism. Lovers are beyond chronology.
Stanza Two: The Solar Travel Challenge
“Thy beams so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?”
He’s now taunting the Sun’s strength like a poetic daredevil.
“I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink…”
Sir. A wink?
Yes. Because that’s all it takes to shut out the sun when your room is already glowing with love. He’s suggesting that eyelids > cosmos. Metaphysical flex activated.
“Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices…”
Here, Donne sends the Sun away like it’s a cosmic assistant with the wrong calendar. Go wake up the peasants. Go alert the bureaucrats. Leave us, the important ones, alone.
“Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,
Whether both th’India’s of spice and mine
Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me.”
He claims that all the riches—the East’s spices, the West’s gold—are here in his bed. You know, casually placing his lover on par with global trade routes. This is not exaggeration. This is Donneism.
“She’s all states, and all princes I…”
This line is pure monarchy-meets-monogamy.
The beloved is all the kingdoms.
Donne is every ruler.
And the United Nations of Love has just declared its bed the capital of the world.
Stanza Three: Solar Retirement Plan
“Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world’s contracted thus.”
He’s literally offering the Sun a pension package. Why travel across the globe when this room contains it all?
“Thine age asks ease…”
Ouch. Sun, you’re old. Stop orbiting. Chill out. Retire early and warm our bed instead.
“Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.”
It’s geometric. It’s romantic. It’s egoistic brilliance. Donne redefines the heliocentric model—placing himself and his lover at the center of the universe.
Move over, Copernicus. There’s a new theory in town, and it involves less orbiting and more spooning.
Modern Translations & ABS Observations
“Busy old fool…”
Modern version: Alexa, turn off the sun.
“She’s all states, and all princes I…”
A Tinder bio that just broke the fourth wall of romantic entitlement.
“Love… no season knows nor clime…”
Translation: We don’t do daylight savings. We do desire.
“This bed thy center is…”
Or, in 2024: If the Wi-Fi reaches the bed, the universe can wait.
Why This Poem Still Shines Without SPF
Because love still refuses to clock in.
Because metaphors this good make physics blush.
Because “shut up, Sun” will always be relatable.
And because no one—before or since—has bullied daylight so charmingly.
The Literary Scholar folds the scroll while the Sun peeks through the curtain, still embarrassed, and the lovers remain—glorious, timeless, and utterly immune to alarm clocks.
Signed,
The Literary Scholar
Where love rewrites the orbit
Where curtains are stronger than the cosmos
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