In sequent toil all forwards do contend. . . .
     And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand 
     Praising thy worth, dispight his cruell hand.

     John Donne’s poem on “The Sun Rising” exploits the 
contrast between aristocratic and bourgeois time. The one trait 
that most damned the bourgeoisie  of the nineteenth century 
was their punctuality, their pedantic devotion to mechanical-
time and sequential order. As space-time flooded through the 
gates of awareness from the new electric technology, all 
mechanical observance became distasteful and even ridiculous. 
Donne had the same ironic sense of the irrelevance of clock-
time, but pretended that in the kingdom of love even the great 
cosmic cycles of time were also petty aspects of the clock:

               Busy old fool, unruly Sun,