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06775_Field_TCUM T340.txt
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1996-04-10
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834b
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16 lines
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,