Break Of Day
'TIS true, 'tis day ; what though it be?
O, wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise because 'tis light?
Did we lie down because 'twas night?
Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together.


Light hath no tongue, but is all eye ;
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could say,
That being well I fain would stay,
And that I loved my heart and honour so
That I would not from him, that had them, go.

Must business thee from hence remove?
O ! that's the worst disease of love,
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.

• Interpretation
  In this poem, Donne uses personification and rhyme as literary techniques. With those techniques he is asking the question of why does his woman and him have to part just because it is light out? While giving "light" human qualities, he also gives the positive and negative effects of light.
  
  

The Sun Rising
BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou think ?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

She's all states, and all princes I ;
Nothing else is ;
Princes do but play us ; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world's contracted thus ;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

• Interpretation
  Within the first stanza Donne has a message that is saying that as the sun rises a new day has begun, but he is also saying that time is a waste. Throughout the rest of the poem there is a woman that Donne is talking of while the sun rises, and that he is having the best day of his life.
  
  

Holy Sonnet I
THOU hast made me, and shall Thy work decay ?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste ;
I run to death, and Death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.
I dare not move my dim eyes any way ;
Despair behind, and Death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh.
Only Thou art above, and when towards Thee
By Thy leave I can look, I rise again ;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one hour myself I can sustain.
Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art
And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.

• Interpretation
  the poem talks him believing in a supermatural beeing that controls his life and everthing that he does. He believes in him and will do anything to because it is this supernatural being that gives him an iron heart.

Woman's Constancy.
NOW thou hast loved me one whole day,
To-morrow when thou leavest, what wilt thou say ?
Wilt thou then antedate some new-made vow ?
Or say that now
We are not just those persons which we were ?
Or that oaths made in reverential fear
Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear ?
Or, as true deaths true marriages untie,
So lovers' contracts, images of those,
Bind but till sleep, death's image, them unloose ?
Or, your own end to justify,
For having purposed change and falsehood, you
Can have no way but falsehood to be true ?
Vain lunatic, against these 'scapes I could
Dispute, and conquer, if I would ;
Which I abstain to do,
For by to-morrow I may think so too.

• Interpretation
  Donne is not totally sure if a woman love is forever or for just a season like when marriages untie or death separates those in love. He doubts if if he is able to love forever or will change with time just like love changes with time.
  
  

The Funeral
WHOEVER comes to shroud me, do not harm,
Nor question much,
That subtle wreath of hair, which crowns my arm ;
The mystery, the sign, you must not touch ;
For 'tis my outward soul,
Viceroy to that, which then to heaven being gone,
Will leave this to control
And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolution.

For if the sinewy thread my brain lets fall
Through every part
Can tie those parts, and make me one of all,
Those hairs which upward grew, and strength and art
Have from a better brain,
Can better do 't ; except she meant that I
By this should know my pain,
As prisoners then are manacled, when they're condemn'd to die.

Whate'er she meant by it, bury it with me,
For since I am
Love's martyr, it might breed idolatry,
If into other hands these relics came.
As 'twas humility
To afford to it all that a soul can do,
So 'tis some bravery,
That since you would have none of me, I bury some of you.

• Interpretation
  In the first stanza of “The Funeral” is an explanation to the persons to who are burying John Donne’s deceased body. The title itself is a clear explanation of what the poem is speaking of. As the poem implies, he has passed away, now merely a corpse marked with a lock of hair about his arm. This hair, however, is not his own. He goes on to explain the significance of these follicles, and why those of who shroud his body with a sheet should neither concern it nor touch the hair. Simply, he demands them, to not harm this “subtle wreath.” John Donne had fallen to the liking of a lady, and by the words of the poem, it is suggestive that she did not share similar feelings towards Donne. Perhaps her rejection has contributed to his death, but the poem does not seem to specifically say. “The mystery, the sign” as he refers to this hair, suggests that his own understandings of this gesture are not clear, though he looks at it with wistful hopes. In the third stanza, we see more vividly his confusion. “Whate'er she meant by it, bury it with me.” He explains that he becomes a victim to her power. The spell that she has over him has taken him even in death. In the last line, he begins to talk directly to the woman. “Since you would have none of me, I bury some of you.” The final line explains clearly that though this woman has rejected him, perhaps playing and toying with him by giving a lock of her own hair, he carries that piece of her with him to the grave, where she will forever be woven with him for death’s eternity.