“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,
     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.”