Break of Day by John Donne - Essay Example

“Break of Day” may be recognized to possess simplistic approach of conveying its imagery and a regular metric pattern in three stanzas each having six lines with rhyme schemed at ‘baabbcc’ which appear to have been rendered as such for the purpose of developing a characteristic voice in support of the poem’s theme. Donne initiates the first stanza with a dramatic monologue as the speaker raises her questions with a tone that suggests her position about love and the degree or manner she works it out with her lover.

When she asks “Why should we rise because ‘tis light? / Did we lie down because ‘twas night?” in dismay, she occurs to be contradicting the change of behavior in her lover who sleeps and makes loves with her in the dark but responds promptly to the call of duty or other imperative distractions apart from her when daylight arrives. Though words from the other party can be read merely based on assumption, the ensuing indifference with the situation is reflected in the main character’s attitude toward him.

The woman alludes how she perceives the superficiality of her lover’s affection when he seems to care only for the pleasure love brings which is far from her own perception and respect for the great worth of inseparability of union in love despite the day-and-night cycle of time. In the second stanza, Donne creates a personification of ‘light’ as an entity without a tongue “but is all eye”. . Instead of having another figure to represent performance of this task, however, the light itself becomes a self-sustaining witness that could lay sight even of objects not seen by the naked eyes.

This is evident particularly when the speaker says “And that I loved my heart and honour so” where she confesses the remarkable capacity of the light that “If it could speak as well as spy” then, it might as well testify beyond physical countenance that much more is revealed out of sentiments that are typically bound to be kept. Here, the yearning woman expresses how she, as much as possible, would choose not to be departed from her love saying “That I would not from him, that had them, go” even if her man responds otherwise, going against such preference.

Beginning the third stanza with “Must business thee from hence remove?” signifies that the other context of light, by daybreak, exhibits the cause of the speaker’s jealous attitude. By dawn, she feels everything changes because only when it is still dark that she is able to relish the experience of having the man by her side. There emerges with her a certain level of subtle bitterness as she sounds all the more possessive in treating ‘business’ or anything outside of their affair as a rival once the night is through, justifying the feelings claimed via the first two opening lines – “’Tis true, ‘tis day, what though it be?

/ O wilt thou therefore rise from me?” To this extent, the reader may have sufficiently imagined and understood the situation with the woman who hopes never to part from her love interest. Night is all good and darkness connotes something