Kim Bumttruesttoo

12A01A

Write a critical comparison The Sunne Rising, The Good Morrow and The Anniversarie taking care to
comment on the use of imagery and tone.

All the poems presented address the narrators mistress (directly or indirectly) and celebrate their love
as supreme, shssnowledging that the physical and the spiritual coexist at the same time. In that regard,
the tone employed is generally positive, though it fluctuates as the narrator acknowledges reasliy in a
world time and change, having to negotiate this tension through different ways in the poems, as seen in
the different types of imagery used across the three poems

The most apparent demonstration of this positive tone is in the beginning of the poems. The opening
lines of The Anniversarie, grandiose, declarative and full of exaggerative bluster, seem to explode with a
sense of adulation and respect, often by associating it with powerful royalty (All Kings, and all their
favorites). Love here, is one spoken of in absolutes (everlasting) and inevitabilities (decay),
suggesting a sovereign quality to it. In addition, the narrator makes declarative statements of praise
about their love, (Only our love hath no decay) to the extent that he sounds bold and arrogant, a trait
that is similar to that seen in The Sunne Rising.

In it, the narrator frames the poem through a pseudo-argument of sorts, berating an apparent subject
with apparent scorn, when the true subject is the lady, the true emotion love. This systematic inversion
then prompts the narrator to adopt an obnoxious, and chiding tone, if only to generate Love's
appropriate emotion, ecstatic homage. This obnoxiousness is maintained, starting from the dramatic
and bold emphasis of the first word, Busie, to the insistent imperatives used (goe chide, goe tell
and Shine here to us) , and finally the intonation, stress and gestures that are imposed on us (Must to
thy motions lovers seasons run? and Why dost thou thus). This creates the sense of a vivid, living
speech that in turn manufactures this effect of arrogance. We can then see that the more arrogant his
words, the more adoration he heaps upon his lady in comparison, creating the positive tone of the
poem.

While the other poems have been on polar opposites in terms of how their affections have been
portrayed (directly or obliquely), The Good Morrow presents a much more peaceful satisfaction of love,
one that allows for leisurely contemplation. Yet, to shift to this imaginative world of peace in a cozy little
room of love is a wrench that we also experience as a kind of violence. Nonetheless, Donne employs a
deliberate usage of punctuation and paragraphing that is instrumental to the more contemplative tone
he creates. Three commas are used in the span of the opening line: I wonder by my troth, what thou,
and I Did, till we lovd? and the first stanza is marked by four rhetorical questions, suggesting that this
poem is marked by a tone that while positive, is far more measured. Indeed, this is substantiated by the
use of paragraphing after I, adding a slight pause at the end of the line to produce the conversational
effect of an implied shall we say? before coming down with special stress on the important word
Did. The indefiniteness of Did, elevated by its emphatic stress, then creates the possibility of a real
wonder that reinforces the more meditative tone of this poem.

The language and imagery of the poems play huge parts in conveying the sense of transcendental love
that is initially seen in these reverent tones. In The Good Morrow, the narrator speaks of their love as a
spiritual unity found in the physical intimacy of their one little room, as the lovers take an objective
recognition of self in one another (My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears) and become one in the
image (two loves be one). The physical imagery employed then, suggests a transcendence of the
senses (particularly that of sight) as the narrator remarks on a beauty I did see, which pales in
comparison to the love he basks in, a love which of other sights controules. In The Sunne Rising
however, the narrator makes no physical description of his lovers beauty, yet the poem always
compliments the mistress (She is all States, and all Princes), where the intensity of his worship
guarantees her worth, a value that transcends physicality to a homage to beauty revealed and revered.

The love portrayed is also shown to be supreme in comparison to the external world, a fact conveyed
through the imagery of discovery and royalty. In The Good Morrow for example, the narrator claims
preference over the world which he and his lover share, dismissing the new worlds and worlds on
worlds that sea-discoverers and Maps have showne. Donne employs the specific image of fresh
discovery and exploration to juxtapose with the narrators contentedness at where he is, a place where
him and his lover can possesse one world, each hath one, and is one. This demonstrates that their love
is sublime, needing no novelty or voyages of the sort that these sea discoverers can promise.

Similarly, the narrator of The Anniversarie uses regal imagery to trumpet the supremacy of his love. He
does so firstly by exclaiming about All Kings, and all their favorites before quickly undermining them in
comparison to his love by stating that All other things, to their destruction draw, Only our love hath no
decay. He then declares in this world that they have made unto themselves, that they are Kings, and
none but wee. Furthermore, the narrator of The Anniversary employs regal language such as treason
to add a stately dimension to their rule but also to make claims about the sort of treacheries that
other earthly monarchs suffer, which him and his lover are exempt from (Who is so safe as wee?). In
that same thread, the narrator of The Sunne Rising not only declares that his love is all States, and all
Princes (metaphorically speaking) but also that all earthly literal Princes doe but play us and make to
follow the example of the true authentic royalty - him and his lover.

Indeed, the depth of their loves make it possible for the lovers to inhabit microcosms of their own,
something which is conveyed graphically in each poem. In The Sunne Rising, the lovers transcend the
temporal from the comforts of This bed, crafting a microcosm of such gravity that it contracts the
external world into it (In that the worlds contracted thus), pulling exotic treasures of Indias of spice
and Myne into its center. Similarly for The Good Morrow, love realizes its inner world in one little
roome. However, this inner world does not pull or contract but rather, pushes out to encompass the
external reality. This inner world has a kind of grandeur in its imaginative extent as it expands to become
an every where, a fact captured in the vast imagery of voyage that follows immediately after (Let sea
discoverers to new worlds have gone, Let Maps to other, worlds on worlds have showne). This inner
reality of love dares project itself into external realities, even as it acknowledges the consequences of
time and change experienced in the real world.

Indeed, the lovers in The Anniversarie, seek the dominion of this earth where they are Kings in order
to retain the unique distinctive nature of their love that would have been lost if they were united in
heaven (where they would be thoroughly blest, but *...+ no more, than all the rest.). It it this
recognition of the external world that also brings with it, the recognition of a vulnerability to time and
change. It is at this juncture that The Good Morrow and The Anniversarie adopt far more sombre tones
where the narrators of the poems must negotiate the immortality of their love and the mortality of their
bodies. In that aspect, the evolution of the narrators approaches to this issue become an important
gage of how they reconcile it.

The narrator of The Good Morrow starts by dismissing the past in celebration of a new life after the
awakening of love, a new life that is conveyed through the use of the child metaphor in the first stanza.
Vocabulary associated with the child and birth such as suckd, weand and snortd work together
with allusions such as the seaven sleepers den (a mythological reference to the den which persecuted
Christians took refuge in, before waking into a Christian World) in order to give the impression of a new
being that can necessarily face the inevitability of time eroding life away. Therefore, we see that as the
stanzas progress (progressing from past, to present to future) we see little concern for this impending
death except in a fleeting remark, What ever dyes, was not mixt equally, in the last stanza (the stanza
associated with the future). Even then, it is dismissed with a simple conjecture that If our loves be one,
or, thou and I Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.

The narrator of The Anniversarie, however, suffers from a recognition of an impending dea throughout
the poem. In speaking of death, we feel a strong clinging to the physical (Must leave at last in death,
these eye, and eares, *...+ sweet salt teares); but this is tempered by a consolation that the souls will be
reunited in heaven (But soules where nothing dwells but love [...] then shall prove This, or a love
increased there above), even as he remembers that they will be indistinctive as everyone is thoroughly
blessed (but wee no more, then all the rest). Therefore he considers the earth once more where his
monarchy is unique but tacitly concedes that this perfect love is not immortal and subject to the rule of
times. His final statements are as hedged as they are hopeful, with the narrator speaking of holding back
True and false feares, where the false fear is that they will be untrue to one another but the true fear
that their mortal love is indeed subject to immortality.

These two poems then, differ greatly from the narrator of The Sunne Rising whose exaggeration of
language mimes the assurance of love, when time becomes 'rags' and decay or dimmunition all recede.
Nonetheless, all three poems seek to declare the immortality of love, albeit with different conclusions to
be drawn.

Donne does not assert the immortality of this love by declaring its futility, as with most Petrarchan
poets, but instead makes a modest proposal in these poems to love nobly, and live all the more, that
if none doe slacken, none can die; they would adde againe Yeares and yeares unto yeares to their
life-long love till they attain a metaphorical immortality. But while The Sunne Rising provides a strongly
positive conclusion with its concluding invitation to the sun to Shine here to us, The Anniversarie ends
with shadow a doubt in the readers mind: The veiled threat implied in none can doe treason to us,
except one of us two has not been addressed. Likewise, The Good Morrow proclaims in a backhanded
manner that should none do slacken, none can die, hinting at the similar possibility of treason,
perhaps indicative of hearts that are not as true plaine as proclaimed. In that regard, the If in its
concluding conjecture proves too problematic for us to be soundly convinced of its resolution.