The Full Text of “A Hymn to God the Father”
1Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
2 Which was my sin, though it were done before?
3Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
4 And do run still, though still I do deplore?
5 When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
6 For I have more.
7Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
8 Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
9Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
10 A year or two, but wallow'd in, a score?
11 When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
12 For I have more.
13I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
14 My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
15But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
16 Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
17 And, having done that, thou hast done;
18 I fear no more.
The Full Text of “A Hymn to God the Father”
1Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
2 Which was my sin, though it were done before?
3Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
4 And do run still, though still I do deplore?
5 When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
6 For I have more.
7Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
8 Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
9Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
10 A year or two, but wallow'd in, a score?
11 When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
12 For I have more.
13I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
14 My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
15But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
16 Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
17 And, having done that, thou hast done;
18 I fear no more.
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“A Hymn to God the Father” Introduction
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"A Hymn to God the Father" is English Metaphysical poet John Donne's prayer for forgiveness. Enumerating his sins, the poem's speaker worries that God could never forgive them all—until he realizes that believing God couldn't forgive him is the silliest sin of all. God, this poem says, is fathomlessly merciful, able to forgive the worst of sinners if they only ask. The poem was first published in Donne's posthumous 1633 collection Poems.
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“A Hymn to God the Father” Summary
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Will you forgive me for the original sin I was born with—sin which is mine, even though it's also everyone's, ever since Adam and Eve? Will you forgive me for the sins I'm still committing now, in spite of how I hate them? When you've forgiven me for those sins, your work won't be over: I have more sins to confess.
Will you forgive me for tempting other people to sin, using my sins to invite them to sin themselves? Will you forgive me for the sins I managed to stop committing for a year or two, then indulged in for twenty years? When you've forgiven me for those sins, your work won't be over: I have more sins to confess.
One of my sins is my fear that, when my life is over, I won't make it to heaven. But, God, swear in your own name that when I die, Christ will be as good to me as he is now, and has been before. When you've done that, then your work will be over: I'll no longer be afraid.
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“A Hymn to God the Father” Themes
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Sin and Forgiveness
The speaker of "A Hymn to God the Father" fears that no matter how many of his sins he confesses to God, there will always be "more" sins where those came from. Over the course of this short, reflective poem, the speaker decides that this fear is the most needless sin of all because it shows a blameworthy lack of trust in God. God, this poem says, is merciful, offering boundless forgiveness to even the worst of sinners if they'll only ask.
Reflecting on his life from birth to the present day, the speaker feels sure that he could keep on listing his sins forever and still not scrape the bottom of the barrel. He's sure he’s misbehaved in every conceivable way; he keeps on doing things he "deplore[s]," managing to stop for "a year or two" only to relapse and "wallow[]" in sin again. Worse still, he's tempted other people into sin, becoming a dangerous "door" that leads nowhere good.
With such a long rap sheet, the speaker finds it hard to believe that God could possibly forgive him. Even when God is "done" forgiving the sins the speaker has mentioned so far, the speaker warns, God still "hast not done: / For I have more." The speaker thus fears he’ll finally sin so much that, when he dies, he'll "perish on the shore" of heaven—an image that presents him as a man drowning just when he was about to reach safety. In other words, he worries that all his good intentions and efforts to improve aren't enough to stop him from sinning his way into damnation.
This fear, the speaker finally decides, might actually be the biggest and most needless sin of all. By worrying that God's forgiveness might have limits, the speaker feels he's revealing his own weak faith. To believe in a truly all-loving and all-merciful God means believing that God can and will forgive repentant sinners no matter what they've done. With that in mind, the speaker reaches out to God's "Son," Christ, praying to be reminded that Christ's mercy has always been there and will always be there.
In thinking about sin, the poem thus argues, people need to remember that God's capabilities are very different from humanity's. People might eventually wash their hands of someone who sins constantly, but God will always forgive anyone who asks.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “A Hymn to God the Father”
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Lines 1-4
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?In "A Hymn to God the Father," the speaker grapples with one of the oldest difficulties of religious faith: it's hard to believe that God is truly all-merciful and all-loving.
Reaching out to God in a direct and desperate apostrophe, the speaker wonders how God could possibly forgive him for his many sins. The speaker, this question implies, would certainly find it hard to forgive himself, were he in God's place.
That's partly because, from this speaker's Christian perspective, everyone has sin in them from the very day they're born:
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?Here, the speaker alludes to the doctrine of original sin: the Christian idea that people are born sinful and need to be washed clean by baptism. This sin, the idea goes, was indeed inherited from "before," all the way back when Adam and Eve ate the fateful forbidden fruit. Christ's self-sacrifice redeems that sin, but it's still there.
This is a reverent theological question to start with; the speaker is essentially saying, God, do you really have it in you to forgive me for the sin I was born with, as my faith says you do? The next question, though, gets uncomfortably personal:
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?The sin the speaker's talking about here isn't just the sinfulness inherent in human nature. It's all the sin he's committed himself and keeps on committing, even though he "deplore[s]" (or despises) it. His diacope on "through which I run, / And do run still" evokes his pain: alarmed by how he just keeps doing things he doesn't want to do, he seems exhausted, discouraged, and frightened.
Notice, too, the way the speaker uses anaphora in these lines. Starting both of his questions with the words "Wilt thou forgive that sin," he sounds as if he's making a formal prayer, getting down on his knees to ask God: Truly? Can you really forgive me for all this? This poem will become not just a hymn, but a confession and a prayer.
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Lines 5-6
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more. -
Lines 7-12
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallow'd in, a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more. -
Lines 13-14
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore; -
Lines 15-18
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done;
I fear no more.
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“A Hymn to God the Father” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Apostrophe
The speaker's apostrophe to God reminds readers that, to this speaker, God is indeed a loving "Father."
Much of what the speaker has to say to God in this poem feels like a confession. The speaker shamefacedly tells God he's done things he "deplore[s]": he's "won others to sin," "shun[ned]" sin for a little while only to "wallow" in it again. Asking God if God could possibly forgive him for all these things, the speaker closes each list of confessions with words readers might hear as at once contrite and darkly funny: "When thou hast done" ("when you've forgiven those sins," that is), "thou hast not done, / For I have more."
In other words, the speaker is baring his soul to God, admitting to every rotten thing he's ever done and humbly accepting that he probably can't even think of every sin he's committed. This is an act of deep trust—a point that becomes even clearer when the speaker confesses his "sin of fear," his worry that God won't forgive him, but turn around and damn him for all his sins in the end. The only cure for this fear, the speaker tells God, is for God to "swear by thyself" that Christ will go on being merciful and loving.
Confessing that his deepest fear is that God couldn't forgive him, the speaker reveals how deep his faith really is. God, his apostrophes suggest, is the only cure for both his sin and his fear that he's unforgivable. This loving "Father" can both forgive any sin the speaker lays down and remind the speaker that this is so.
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Refrain
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Pun
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Anaphora
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Metaphor
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"A Hymn to God the Father" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Wilt thou
- My sin, though it were done before
- Deplore
- Shun
- Perish
- Thyself/Thy
- Heretofore
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An old-fashioned way of saying "Will you." Note that "thou," which sounds pretty formal to modern ears, would once have been an intimate, familiar way of saying "you."
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “A Hymn to God the Father”
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Form
This poem is a hymn, a religious song. John Donne was Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London when he wrote it; much to his delight, the cathedral's choir set the poem to music and often performed it.
Like a lot of Donne's poems, "A Hymn to God the Father" uses an innovative form of Donne's own design:
- Each of its three stanzas is a sestet (six-line stanza) rhymed ABABAB.
- And the lines of each of those sestets shrink, moving from standard iambic pentameter (lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, like this: "Wilt thou | forgive | that sin | which I | have won") to a teeny little dimeter conclusion: "For I | have more." It's as if the speaker's voice trails off as he owns up to his sinfulness.
All these strict formal choices reflect a speaker grappling with a religious dilemma: he believes in an all-merciful and forgiving God, but also can't imagine how God could possibly forgive him for his countless sins. By putting his speaker's confessions into a neat, tight form, Donne declares his faith in an eternal law: yes, God can and will forgive, and that's always true.
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Meter
"A Hymn to God the Father" is written in iambs—that is, metrical feet with a pulsing da-DUM rhythm. The first four lines of each stanza are in iambic pentameter, a meter with five iambs per line. Here's how that sounds in line 1:
Wilt thou | forgive | that sin | where I | begun,
In the last two lines of each stanza, though, the lines shrink down, first to iambic tetrameter (four iambs in a row) and then to iambic dimeter (just two iambs in a row):
When thou | hast done, | thou hast | not done,
For I | have more.Those shortening lines make the stanzas seem to tense up, reflecting the speaker's desperate fear that he might simply have sinned too much to be forgiven.
In the final stanza, though, that shrinking-down has a different effect: the speaker's brief closing line, "I fear no more," doesn't feel constricted, but firm, calm, and final.
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Rhyme Scheme
The alternating rhyme scheme of "A Hymn to God the Father" runs like this:
ABABAB
Relatively unusually, the poem uses exactly the same rhymes all through the poem. That is, rather than moving on to a new set of rhymes in the same alternating pattern, the poem sticks to the same A and B rhymes throughout: begun in stanza 1 rhymes with won in stanza 2 and spun in stanza 3, for instance.
Even more strictly, the last two lines of each stanza always end with the same words, done and more. The first two times those words appear, they're even part of a refrain, whole repeated lines in which the speaker frets that he'll always have more sins to lay at God's feet.
All of these rigid rhymes reflect two inescapable things: the speaker's sinfulness, and God's forgiveness. Afraid he'll sin so much that God can't forgive him, the speaker comes to understand that such a fear is a sin in itself: the only thing more endless than his capacity to do wrong is God's capacity to forgive. By using the same patterns over and over, the poem's rhyme scheme reflects the speaker's belief that, truly, no matter what, God always extends forgiveness to those who ask for it.
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“A Hymn to God the Father” Speaker
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While readers might reasonably interpret this poem's speaker as any repentant Christian sinner, the poem gives a strong hint that the speaker is John Donne himself. The clue is in a pun.
Whenever the speaker tells God that "when thou hast done, thou has not done," he means not just that it's hard to believe God could ever forgive his endless supply of misdeeds, but that he fears God will never "have Donne" completely, never cure him of all his sins. Some critics have observed that the line "I have more" might be punny, too. John Donne's wife, with whom he illegally eloped—a choice for which he served jail time—was named Ann More.
With or without this pun, the poem's speaker is a deeply religious and reflective person, trying his best to believe that God can forgive the speaker for sins the speaker can't forgive himself for.
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“A Hymn to God the Father” Setting
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There's no clear setting in this poem; the speaker is looking too deeply inward to remark on the world around him. However, if readers interpret the speaker as Donne himself (which the poem's punning on the word "done" certainly invites), then they can guess that his wrangle with sin and salvation takes place in the early 17th century, and even pinpoint the year. Donne's biographer Izaak Walton noted that Donne wrote the poem when he was suffering from a near-fatal fever in 1623—a fever that likely produced more than one of Donne's fervent hymns.
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Literary and Historical Context of “A Hymn to God the Father”
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Literary Context
John Donne (1572-1631) is remembered as one of the foremost of the "metaphysical poets"—though he never called himself one. The later writer Samuel Johnson coined the term, using it to describe a set of 17th-century English writers who wrote witty, passionate, intricate, cerebral poetry about love and God; George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, and Thomas Traherne were some others.
Donne was the prototypical metaphysical poet: a master of elaborate conceits and complex sentences and a great writer of love poems that mingle images of holiness with filthy puns. But during his lifetime, he was mostly a poet in private. In public life, he was an important clergyman, rising to become Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Most of Donne's poems weren't printed until 1633, when his collection Poems was posthumously published. "A Hymn to God the Father," however, was well-known during Donne's life: he had it set to music and enjoyed listening to the cathedral choir performing it.
Donne's mixture of cynicism, passion, and mysticism fell out of literary favor after his 17th-century heyday; Johnson, for instance, a leading figure of the 18th-century Enlightenment, did not mean "metaphysical poet" as a compliment, seeing Donne and his contemporaries as obscure and irrational. But 19th-century Romantic poets like Samuel Taylor Coleridge were stirred by Donne's mixture of philosophy and emotion, and their enthusiasm slowly resurrected Donne's reputation. Donne is now remembered as one of the most powerful and influential of poets, and he's inspired later writers from T.S. Eliot to Yeats to A.S. Byatt.
Historical Context
This poem's religious fervor flows from both Donne's life and his times. Donne was born during an era in which Protestantism had become the official state religion of Britain. English Catholics were often persecuted and killed. Donne himself was born into a Catholic family; his own brother went to prison for hiding a priest in his home. (The priest, not so fortunate, was tortured and executed.)
All this violence emerged from the schism between English Catholics and Protestants that began during the reign of Henry VIII, who died about 30 years before Donne was born. Wishing to divorce his first wife and marry a second—unacceptable under Catholicism—Henry split from the Pope and founded his own national Church of England (also known as the Anglican church). This break led to generations of conflict and bloodshed between Anglican Protestants and Catholic loyalists.
Donne himself would eventually renounce Catholicism in order to become an important Anglican clergyman under the patronage of King James I. While his surviving sermons suggest he had a sincere change of heart about his religion, his use of Catholic language hints that he didn't altogether abandon the beliefs of his youth.
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More “A Hymn to God the Father” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to the great Shakespearean actor Simon Russell Beale perform this poem and discuss what it means to him.
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The Poem Set to Music — Listen to one of the many musical versions of the hymn.
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A Brief Biography — Learn more about Donne's life and work from the British Library.
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Donne's Effigy — See images of Donne's startling funeral monument, which depicts his shrouded corpse standing bolt upright—an image that reflects his faith in the resurrection.
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The Metaphysical Poets — Read an introduction to the Metaphysical Poets (for whom Donne is the poster boy).
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LitCharts on Other Poems by John Donne
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