NON-AFRICAN POETRY
What is the poet’s attitude towards the sun in ” The Sunne Rising”?
Explanation
The poet’s attitude towards the sun is more complex than it first appears. There are two discernible attitudes which the poet adopts towards the sun.
Initially, the poet is irritated by the sun. He starts the monologue on a querulous note. The questions he asks indicate the irritation which the sun is causing him. The sun is personified as a “Busy old fool” who persists in waking him and his lover up even though no one has invited him to do so. The sun is, here, a busybody and might do well to mind his own business.
The poet’s later diction reinforces his contempt for the sun whom he sees as a “pedantic wretch”. This suggests the sun’s unimaginative and ostentatious following of rules. The poet’s distaste is obvious here. The implication is that the sun, if it wants to follow the rule of waking people up early daily, should look for others who are less earnestly engaged, such as “late school boys and sour prentices”.
These others are engaged in mundane activities and should therefore be the target of the sun’s rays. He and his lover are enjoying a relationship which is on a much higher level than the activities of “court-huntsmen” arid “country ants”, so the sun, which really determines time, can have no effect on them. The poet’s irritation is mitigated later. The sun is no longer a busybody. He focuses is on the sun’s pretentiousness; “Thy beams so reverend and strong/Why shouldst thou think?” Thus the poet’s conceit is a pointer to the fact that he believes that in the realm of things, the sun is really like a bleep on a screen. The poet could shut his eyes and the sun will cease to exist.
A further shift in the poet’s attitude is discernible. He still feels that the sun is insignificant though the focus has now shifted to himself and his mistress — the two are the most important beings in the whole world: “she is all states, and all princes I / Nothing else is”. At this point he patronizes the sun by referring to its age and suggesting that it needs some rest. By shining on them the sun will be doing its duty to the world.