In his poem "The Sun Rising," John Donne uses personification of the sun, anti-courtier rhetoric, and metaphysical conceit to express love's ability to transcend earthly conditions and place lovers at the center of the universe. The poem opens with the speaker mocking the sun for interrupting his morning with his lover. He addresses the sun as a nosy old man, saying, “Busy old fool, undisciplined sun, / Why do you do so… / Pedantic and impertinent wretch” (665, 1-5). The sun, which in most traditions is variously symbolic of power, monarchy and divinity, is here reduced to a very earthly and humble state, contrary to its usual place among the heavens. Through its personification by the speaker, the sun transforms from a noble celestial body to one that not only lacks authority, but is “rebellious” and “impertinent.” Both qualities imply his lower status, but also his defiant, and therefore ignoble, appearance. The speaker goes on to say to the sun, “Go and scold / Late boys and sour apprentices /…love, all alike, knows no season nor climate, / Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time," (665, 5-10). After relegating the sun to the position of a lowly fool, the speaker tells him that he has no jurisdiction over him and his lover. Although the sun governs all the inhabitants of the world, ordering them when to sleep, wake up and work, only lovers refuse to submit to its rule. The hours and days have no meaning to them and are called the “rags of time,” which once again downgrades the sun's status to that of a pauper and makes the lovers rich by comparison. As a result of the power of their love, they need no government but their own. While the rest of the world responds to the will of the sun, the two lovers, without the need to... middle of paper...undermine in his declaration that he and his lover are the whole world. He informs the sun that he can fulfill his duty of warming the world by staying to warm them, because they enclose the world. The sun is left to orbit around the lovers' bed. The state of being in love has led the couple to replace all the principles of the world and dominate its vast well, and establishes them as the heart of the universe. As a result of their passionate love, the speaker of the poem and his lover transcend the material constraints and limitations of their low station, as well as feeling themselves at the center of the universe. Donne's personification of the sun, his use of anti-courtier rhetoric that expands the anti-authoritarian sentiment directed at the sun, and his metaphysical conceit that elevates lovers above nobility and wealth, all reveal the transcendent quality of the 'Love..