Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person'd God John Donne, critical analysis and summary, three images

 

Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person'd God

John Donne

Poem:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp'd town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

 

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,

But am betroth'd unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Introduction

™ Batter my Heart is one of the 19 sonnets Donne wrote after taking orders in the Anglican church, it is also known as Divine Meditations

™ It was published in the first edition of Songs and Sonnets (1633)

™ Religious poem

™ Petrarchan verse

™ Rhyme scheme :ABBAABBA (octave), CDCCDC (sestet)

™ Meter: Iambic Pentameter

Analysis

q The poet pictures an afflicted lover of God who is hurt because he is deviated from the holy path to the sinful path

q He urges God to ravish his body and make him chaste

q The poet prays to God in his three fold capacity as the father, the son and the holy spirit, to batter his heart and reshape it

q God has knocked at him, blown his breath through his bellows and lighted the fire of his love and mercy to purify and reshape him

q But all these methods has ended without attaining the end. Therefore God should overthrow the poet and bend his force to bend, break, blow and make him new and free from sin.

q The poem is a plea for God to enter and take over poet’s life

Three images

™ The poem develops through three images

      i.         A potter or craftsman repairing  a damaged vessel

    ii.         Military terms: he is like a town captured and being ruled by God’s enemy. The poet now an usurped town that owes its allegiance or due to someone else. He is frustrated that his reason, God’s viceroy in the town of his soul is captive to other forces and is failing to persuade him to leave his sins behind

  iii.         The third image is sexual, the poet compares himself to a woman who is compelled to marry against her will . The tone moves from political to personal. He loves God but “is bethroth’d unto enemy”. He seeks God’s help to achieve the divorce from his sinful marriage and break free

Donne says he cannot be wooed into salvation but must be taken by force

Donne has put the World and the sensuous life completely behind him and was probing with anxiety for the right relationship with eternal.

The later sonnets display Donne’s continuing love of wit and paradoxes but also is deepening concern about his relationship to God

He tempered the sardonic indifference of some of his earlier poetry with the submissiveness of faith

His vigorous intellect, willy imagery and love of paradox characterize his poetry.

Themes

™ Religion

™ Love : the poet’s wish for salvation is the fact that he loves God more than the usual spiritual level. He is interested in two sided love, where he loves and is loved back

™ Sex is a metaphor, the speaker uses for the way in which God might demonstrate love for the speaker

™ His relationship like working is through encounter of a sexual nature

™ Violence: the poet wishes God to punish him (ravish his body) in order to mend  his sinful soul

™ Warfare: He calls upon God to storm the walls and retake the invaded fortress. God should not deter from causing damage to the speaker, in order to bring him to the path of salvation