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The meter of “The Sun Rising” is generally iambic. This means that the poem’s underlying rhythm is defined by the predominance of iambs, each of which consists of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (as in the word “to-day”). But despite the general tendency toward iambic rhythm, the line lengths vary significantly over the course of each ten-line stanza. Donne has built each stanza with the same varying pattern of stresses: 4-2-5-5-4-4-5-5-5-5. This means that lines 1, 4, and 6 are written in iambic tetrameter (i.e., four feet); line 2 is written in iambic dimeter (i.e., two feet); and lines 3, 4, and 7–10 are written in iambic pentameter (i.e., five feet). Such a variable stress pattern was somewhat unusual in Donne’s time, when poets wrote in established forms more often than invented ones. In the case of “The Sun Rising,” however, Donne takes a playful attitude toward poetic form that mirrors the speaker’s playful attitude toward the sun.

To get a sense for the speaker’s playfulness, consider the opening stanza (lines 1–10):

                    Bu-sy / old fool, / un-ru- / ly sun,
                    Why dost / thou thus,
     Through win- / dows, and / through cur- / tains call / on us?
     Must to / thy mo- / tions lov- / ers' sea- / sons run?
                    Sau-cy / ped-an- / tic wretch, / go chide 
                    Late school / boys and / sour pren- / ti-ces,
              Go tell / court hunts- / men that / the king / will ride
              Call count- / ry ants / to har- / vest off- / ic-es,
     Love, all / a-like, / no sea- / son  knows / nor clime,
     Nor hours, / days, months, / which are / the rags / of time.

Donne’s contemporaries often remarked on his loose adherence to metrical form, and this stanza clarifies why. Despite the variations in line length, Donne does maintain a fairly strict iambic meter in the first half of the stanza. The only significant type of deviation in the first four lines involves the substitution of a trochee (stressed–unstressed) in the first foot. This substitution occurs in lines 1, 4, and 5. In the fifth line, however, Donne introduces a new variation in its ambiguous final foot. Although we could force iambic rhythm here, the language seems to insist on a double stress pattern that would result in a spondee (stressed–stressed):

                    Sau-cy / ped-an- / tic wretch, / go chide

A similar situation occurs in the first foot of line 6, which is also arguably spondaic. The line then goes on to include other metrical oddities:

                    Late school / boys and / sour pren- / ti-ces

Here Donne follows a spondee with a pyrrhic (unstressed–unstressed), then repeats that same pattern again. Although these variations do disrupt the rhythmic flow of the language, they also give the speaker a more playful cadence that underscores the emphatic nature of his address to the sun.

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