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“The Sun Rising” consists of three stanzas, each of which is loosely modeled on the structure of the sonnet. This claim may at first seem strange, given that the stanzas are each ten lines long. Furthermore, though the lines are primarily iambic, they vary in length, from two to five feet. Such a structure differs markedly from the sonnet, which technically requires fourteen lines, usually written in consistent iambic pentameter. Yet a closer look at Donne’s unusual stanza form reveals deeper structural similarities to the sonnet. In particular, consider each stanza’s rhyme scheme: ABBACDCDEE. This scheme features two quatrains and a final couplet. The first quatrain (ABBA) recalls the rhyme scheme that typically opens an Italian sonnet. Italian sonnets are composed of two parts, the first of which—known as the octave—rhymes ABBAABBA. Donne uses the same reversing rhyme structure, but he reduces the octave to a quatrain. The second quatrain (CDCD) has the alternating rhyme structure more typical of the English sonnet. English sonnets are also known for ending with a couplet that somehow resolves or comments on the tensions raised throughout the poem. Donne’s stanzas each end with just such a couplet—at once punchy and conclusive.

In addition to the sonnet-like stanza structure, it’s also important to note the poem’s overall thematic structure, which traces the speaker’s shift from playful irritation to exuberant egocentrism. The poem opens with the speaker hurling abuse at the sun, whose rays have penetrated the windows of his bedroom, rousing him and his lover from their amorous reverie. In his irritation, he wants to banish the sun from the room. He indicates as much in the first stanza, where he commands the sun to leave and attend to more urgent duties (lines 5–8):

                           go chide
                    Late school boys and sour prentices,
              Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
              Call country ants to harvest offices

In the second stanza, however, the speaker’s initial irritation morphs into a more playful attitude. Though he still aims at humbling the sun, the speaker now impishly inflates his own ego and introduces the idea that his bedroom contains the whole world. The speaker then expands on this trope in the third stanza. In elaborating the notion of his bedroom as a microcosm, the speaker pulls the sun into his own gravitational orbit (lines 29–30):

     Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
     This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

Whereas the speaker began by banishing the sun, by the poem’s end he insists that the sun must remain as his personal source of warmth and illumination.

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