Holy Sonnets

10.

Batter my heart, three-personed 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 usurped town, to another due,

Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end,

Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captived, and proves weak or untrue,

Yet dearly’I love you, and would be loved fain,

But am betrothed unto your enemy,

Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I

Except you enthral me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

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7. Ascension

Salute the last and everlasting day,

Joy at the uprising of this sun, and son,

Ye whose just tears, or tribulation

Have purely washed, or burnt your drossy clay;

Behold the Highest, parting hence away,

Lightens the dark clouds, which he treads upon,

Nor doth he by ascending, show alone,

But first he, and he first enters the way.

O strong ram, which has battered heaven for me,

Mild lamb, which with thy blood, hast marked the path;

Bright torch, which shin’st, that I the way may see,

Oh, with thine own blood quench thine own just wrath,

And if thy holy Spirit, my Muse did raise,

Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise.

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

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6. Resurrection

Moist with one drop of thy blood, my dry soul

Shall (though she now be in extreme degree

Too stony hard, and yet too fleshly,) be

Freed by that drop, from being starved, hard, or foul,

And life, by this death abled, shall control

Death, whom thy death slew; nor shall to me

Fear of first or last death, bring misery,

If in thy little book my name thou enrol,

Flesh in that long sleep is not putrefied,

But made that there, of which, and for which ’twas;

Nor can by other means be glorified.

May then sin’s sleep, and death’s soon from me pass,

That waked from both, I again risen may

Salute the last, and everlasting day.

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

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5. Crucifying

By miracles exceeding power of man,

He faith in some, envy in some begat,

For, what weak spirits admire, ambitious hate;

In both affections many to him ran,

But oh! the worst are most, they will and can,

Alas, and do, unto the immaculate,

Whose creature Fate is, now prescribe a fate,

Measuring self-life’s infinity to a span,

Nay to an inch. Lo, where condemned he

Bears his own cross, with pain, yet by and by

When it bears him, he must bear more and die.

Now thou art lifted up, draw me to thee,

And at thy death giving such a liberal dole,

Moist, with one drop of thy blood, my dry soul.

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

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4. Temple

With his kind mother who partakes thy woe,

Joseph turn back; see where your child doth sit,

Blowing, yea blowing out those sparks of wit,

Which himself on those Doctors did bestow;

The Word but lately could not speak, and lo

It suddenly speaks wonders, whence comes it,

That all which was, and all which should be writ,

A shallow seeming child, should deeply know?

His godhead was not soul to his manhood,

Nor had time mellowed him to this ripeness,

But as for one which hath a long task, ’tis good,

With the sun to begin his business,

He in his age’s morning thus began

By miracles exceeding power of man,

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

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3. Nativity

Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,

Now leaves his well-beloved imprisonment,

There he hath made himself to his intent

Weak enough, now into our world to come;

But oh, for thee, for him, hath th’ inn no room?

Yet lay him in this stall, and from the orient,

Stars, and wisemen will travel to prevent

Th’ effect of Herrod’s jealous general doom.

See’st thou, my soul, with my faith’s eyes, how he

Which fills all place, yet none hold him, doth life?

Was not his pity towards thee wondrous high

That would have need to be pitied by thee?

Kiss him, and with him into Egypt go,

With his kind mother, who partakes thy woe.

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

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2. Annunciation

Salvation to all that will is nigh,

That all, which always is all everywhere,

Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,

Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,

Lo, faithful Virgin, yields himself to lie

In prison, in thy womb; and though he there

Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet he ‘will wear

Taken from thence, flesh, which death’s force may try.

Ere by the spheres time was created, thou

Wast in his mind, who is thy son, and brother,

Whom thou conceiv’st, conceived; yea thou art now

Thy maker’s maker, and thy father’s mother,

Thou’ hast light in dark; and shutt’st in little room,

Immensity cloistered in the dear womb.

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

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I

Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise,

Weaved in my low devout melancholy,

Thou which of good, hast, yea art treasury,

All changing unchanged Ancient of days,

But do not, with a vile crown of frail bays,

Reward my muse’s white sincerity,

But what thy thorny crown gained, that give me,

A crown of glory, which doth flower always;

The ends crown our works, but thou crown’st our ends,

For, at our end  begins our endless rest,

This first last end, now zealously possessed

With a strong sober thirst, my soul attends.

‘Tis time that heart and voice be lifted high,

Salvation to all that will is nigh.

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990

Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward

Let man’s soul be a sphere, and then, in this,

The intelligence that moves, devotion is,

And as the other spheres, by being grown

Subject to foreign motions, lose their own,

And being by others hurried every day,

Scarce in a year their natural form obey:

Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit

For their first mover, and are whirled by it.

Hence is’t, that I am carried towards the west

This day, when my soul’s form bends toward the east.

There I should see a sun, by rising set,

And by that setting endless day beget;

But that Christ on this Cross, did rise and fall,

Sin had eternally benighted all.

Yet dare I’ almost be glad, I do not see

That spectacle of too much weight for me.

Who sees God’s face, that is self life, must die;

What a death were it then to see God die?

It made his own lieutenant Nature shrink,

It made his footstool crack, and the sun wink.

Could I behold those hands which span the poles,

And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes?

Could I behold that endless height which is

Zenith to us, and to’our antipodes,

Humbled below us? or that blood which is

The seat of all our souls, if not of his,

Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn,

By God, for his apparel, ragged, and torn?

If on these things I durst not look, durst I

Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,

Who was God’s partner here, and furnished thus

Half of that sacrifice, which ransomed us?

Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,

They are present yet unto my memory,

For that looks towards them; and thou look’st towards me,

O Saviour, as thou hang’st upon the tree;

I turn my back to thee, but to receive

Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.

O think me worth thine anger, punish me,

Bur off my rusts, and my deformity,

Restore thine image, so much, by thy grace,

That thou mayst know me, and I’ll turn my face.

Selection take from: John Donne: A Critical Edition of the Major Works,  edited by John Carey; Oxford: OUP, 1990