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History of English Literature

Notes world and the flesh and took on the Devil as his adversaries, his poetic modus operandi remained
much the same challenging the readers’ minds with unusual juxtapositions and intricate word-play.
Donne’s religious background was mixed. He was collateral descendent of Sir Thomas More, the
victim of Henry VIII’s intolerance. His family remained fiercely allied with Rome, and one brother
died in prison for having concealed a Roman priest from the Protestant authorities. Despite the
religious ban on Roman Catholics, Donne attended both Oxford and Cambridge because he enrolled
at such a young age. But he did not finish a university degree. When the legal career which he
seems to have envisioned for himself (he studied at the Inns of Court) did not materialize, he
sought preferment in the Church. (No serious doubts have ever been raised concerning the sincerity
of either his conversion to Anglicanism or his priestly vocation.) His keen mind led to powerful
sermons, both in the pulpit and in print, and one piece of his religious prose, the 17th of the
Meditations on Emergent Occasions, is one of the most often quoted works in our literature: “No
man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...; any
man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for
whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Donne’s devotional verse by reading in the Holy Sonnets, published posthumously. Donne used
the sonnet structure which has come to be associated with Shakespeare’s name: three quatrains and
a concluding rhymed couplet. They are not a sonnet-sequence, having neither narrative nor unifying
theme, other than the Gospel.
We can detect in Sonnet 7 some of the characteristics of Metaphysical verse delineated in the
previous Donne lecture. It begins with the paradox of a “round earth’s imagined corners,” a
recognition on the poet-priest’s part that some of the metaphors of Scripture (such as the earth
having four corners) must be taken figuratively. He calls on the angels of judgment to rouse from
the grave all those who have fallen prey to the ills of humanity: “All whom the flood did, and fire
shall overthrow.” But the sonnet is not a perfected utterance; like his amorous poems, it is thought-
in-process. He changes his mind, and asks the Almighty to postpone the Second Coming, so that he
as a sinner can have time to “mourn a space” for his sinfulness. “Teach me to repent,” he asks,
saying that only by that reaction to God’s grace can he be confident of his salvation.
Sonnet 13 demonstrates the unorthodoxy of analogy that distinguishes Donne’s verse and that of
the others such as Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan, and Traherne who are linked with him in the
Metaphysical school. The poem allegorizes the conversion experience of the soul from the Devil to
God. With arrogance not unlike that in “The Sun Rising,” the poet accuses the Almighty of not
making a strong enough effort to save him, to overthrow me,” so that “I may rise, and stand.”
“Batter my heart, three-personed God; for You/ As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to
mend.” He then continues the martial metaphor, saying that he could be seen as a town under
siege. He “labours to admit you,” (with that phrase Donne introduces the sexual imagery), but to
no avail. God’s presence in the human mind, Reason, should help him, but Reason has been
captured and is useless. The result is that the narrator’s soul is pledged to the Devil, “your enemy.”
He calls on the Trinity to effect a divorce, putting asunder the bonds that the Devil has put him in.
“Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again.” The metaphorical reference is again sexual, with
implications of a forced entry. The sonnet concludes with a statement of the essential Christian
paradox of perfect freedom being found only in perfect submission, but the paradox is couched in
language that suggests rape. He says to God, “Take me to You, imprison me,” for only in that
imprisonment can perfect freedom be found. Likewise, purity will elude him until God has taken
him, as it were, against his sinful will: “for I,/ Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,/ Nor
ever chaste, except you ravish me.”

Rehearsal for the Afterlife

The poet’s drawing his imagery from the world of war is not unorthodox, since the Bible and
Christian tradition abound with comparisons to the Christian as a warrior and life as a battle
against sin. It is the frank statement of the metaphor of the action of grace on the unredeemed soul
as akin to rape that disconcerted readers like Dr. Johnson. Interestingly enough, the reverse occurs

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