The Lovers' Bed

The speaker writes the poem from his bedroom, where he sits with his beloved in bed and expresses disinterest in getting up to start his day. This setting immediately introduces an erotic register to the poem, making it flirtatious, playful, and more of a form of flattery for the beloved than a genuine criticism of the sun. By the end of the poem, the speaker has transformed the bed into the center of the universe, as he argues that the sun only needs to shine on this one room in order to shine on the entirety of the world.

The Universe

The speaker plays with the concept of the universe throughout the poem, at first acknowledging the sun as one of the presumed laws of space and time – the sun rises every morning and sets every evening. However, as the poem continues, the speaker slowly upends...