In his poem “The Sun Rising,” author John Donne uses standard English grammar throughout. The poet employs the literary devices of apostrophe, in which the speaker employs direct address or second person, and personification, or endowing an inanimate object—in this case the sun—with human qualities. Here the speaker uses the familiar form “thou,” which is now archaic. The associated verb forms which end in “st,” such as “shouldst,” (line 12) are likewise correctly employed but are now archaic. Especially in stanza 1, the speaker uses the imperative, issuing commands to the sun. An example is “go chide / Late school boys” (lines 5–6).

Occasionally the poet inverts the customary word sequence in a declarative sentence; he places the verb after the direct object rather than before it. An example is “Love … no season knows” instead of “Love knows no season.” A few times he also omits verbs, especially when the implied verb has just been used. An example is “She's all states, and all princes, I” instead of “all princes am I.”

Structurally, the poem has three stanzas, each containing ten lines. The stanzas are organized into rhymed quatrains in an abba cdcd scheme, with a final pair of lines rhymed ee. The rhymes repeat only in stanza 3, in which lines 6 and 8 use the same “thus” and “us” rhyme that appears in stanza 1, lines 2 and 3.