The Sun Rising

Donne’s contemporary—they were born in the same year—poet and playwright Ben Jonson famously commented, “Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging.” Jonson meant Donne did not observe a consistent meter, and he was correct. Donne was an original poet who did not feel the need to follow traditional forms but instead liked to create his own. This can be seen in “The Sun Rising,” although the poem does have a metrical pattern consistent through all three stanzas.

The lines vary in length from dimeter (two poetic feet) to tetrameter (four poetic feet) and pentameter (five poetic feet). Each stanza exhibits the same pattern. Line 1 is a tetrameter; Line 2 is a dimeter, Lines 3 and 4 are pentameters; Lines 5 and 6 are tetrameters, and Lines 7-10 are pentameters.

In Line 1, the tetrameter, Donne grabs the reader’s attention with an explosive beginning: “Busy,” which is a trochaic foot, the emphasis being placed on the first syllable. This is followed by a spondee (“old fool”), a foot in which both syllables are stressed. The line more conventionally closes with two iambs (an iamb is a poetic foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable). The tetrameter in Line 5 also begins with an attention-grabbing trochee, “Saucy,” as does Line 15, with “Look.” Line 25 begins with a spondee, “Thou, sun,” in which both syllables are stressed.

The pentameter lines also exhibit a metrical freedom, although some lines are in regular iambic pentameters. The last four pentameter lines are metrically more regular than any preceding ones. This is appropriate as Donne brings his argument with the sun to a gentle, harmonious conclusion. The only exception is the first foot of Line 29, “Shine here,” which is a trochee; it appropriately places the emphasis on the function of the newly rehabilitated sun, which is no longer the “busy old fool” of Line 1. Interestingly, the corresponding ninth lines in both the previous stanzas also begin with trochees, creating variety in the basic iambic pentameter pattern: These trochees are “Love, all” which begins Line 9, and “Ask for,” which begins Line 19.

The rhyme scheme is the same in all three stanzas. The end of Line 1 rhymes with the end of Line 4, and Line 2 rhymes with Line 3, in coherence with an abba rhyme scheme. The next four lines, Lines, 5 to 8, differently rhyme. Line 5 rhymes with Line 7, and Line 6 with Line 8--a rhyme scheme of cdcd. Each stanza ends with a rhyming couplet (“clime” and “time,” for example, in Stanza 1). The rhyme scheme for each stanza can thus be presented as abba cdcd ee.