John Donne's "The Sun Rising" — Key MCQs
Eight medium-difficulty multiple-choice questions on Donne's poem focusing on quotations, themes, devices, and critical vocabulary for NTRCA and university students.
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Quiz Questions & Answers
Review every prompt, the correct responses, and helpful context to prep for your own run-through.
Question 1: In 'The Sun Rising', the speaker calls the sun a 'busy old fool'. What literary device is primarily at work in this phrase?
Metonymy
Litotes
Synecdoche
Personification
Question 2: When Donne tells the sun 'Go chide', which rhetorical effect does this imperative produce in relation to the poem's speakers?
Assertive defiance that claims control over cosmic order
An ironic comic aside to the audience
A tentative request for permission
Resigned acceptance of celestial authority
Question 3: The line 'Thy beams so reverend and strong' most directly conveys which speaker attitude toward the sun?
Fear and submission
Indifference toward the natural world
Genuine reverence without irony
Mocking respect that undermines solar authority
Question 4: Donne's claim 'Thy beams, so reverend and strong, / Why shouldst thou think?' best exemplifies which conceit strategy?
Equating love to a legal contract
Presenting the sun as a religious icon
Using pastoral imagery of shepherds
Comparing the sun's role to a social interloper in private life
Question 5: Which central theme is most directly asserted by the speaker's line 'Love, all alike, no season knows'?
The timelessness and sovereignty of love over time
Love is a passing mood like weather
Love is subordinate to political power
Romantic love depends on seasonal change
Question 6: When the speaker says 'this bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere', he is primarily illustrating which idea?
That society circumscribes romantic life
That the bed is a religious altar
That their bed contains a microcosm making the lovers' room the universe's center
That the sun physically shrinks to fit their room
Question 7: Which vocabulary word best describes the speaker's argumentative mode toward the sun throughout the poem?
Apathetic
Reverential
Contemptuous
Ambivalent
Question 8: Evaluate this interpretation: 'Donne's speaker argues that physical separation cannot diminish true love because their love redefines space and time.' Which line most strongly supports this reading?
'Thy beams, so reverend and strong, / Why shouldst thou think?'
'Love, all alike, no season knows, / Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time'
'She’s all states, and all princes, I'
'Go, chide inquirers, go'