“Holy Sonnet 14: Batter my heart, three-person'd God” Introduction

• This poem is part of John Donne's Holy Sonnets sequence, which was probably written during the years 1609-1611 and meditates on God, death, divine love, and faith. "Holy Sonnet 14" comes later in the series and depicts a speaker's personal crisis of faith. The poem also boldly compares God's divine love to a rough, erotic seduction. This intimate and unconventional portrayal of a speaker's longing for faith has made the poem one of Donne's most famous.

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“Holy Sonnet 14: Batter my heart, three-person'd God” Summary

• Slam into my heart, God of the Holy Trinity. So far you've just politely knocked, gently breathed, shone your light, and tried to fix me. The only way for me to get up on my own two feet again is for you to knock me over. Use all your power to break me, to blow me down, to burn me up—and in that way remake me as a new person. I'm like a town that has been taken over by a conquering army and is trying to let you back in, but I can't. Logical thinking, which is supposed to rule my mind when you are away, is also supposed to defend me against attacks on my religious faith. Instead, my logical thinking is held captive by enemy forces and turns out to be feeble, or even unfaithful to you. However, I do love you so much, and greatly desire to be loved by you. But I'm married to your enemy. As such, you'll have to break up that marriage. If marriage is tying the knot, you'll have to untie or cut that knot. You'll have to kidnap me and put me in your prison. That's because, unless you make me love you so much that it enslaves me, I'll never be free. And I'll never be pure unless you have your way with me.

“Holy Sonnet 14: Batter my heart, three-person'd God” Themes

• 

  The Agony of Religious Doubt

  John Donne wrote the series of poems called the Holy Sonnets during a period of religious conversion from Catholicism to Anglicanism. In this particular poem, the speaker has lost touch with God altogether and prays desperately for God to return. Furthermore, the speaker believes that faith can only return through forceful means: God has to force his way back into the speaker’s heart. The poem, then, is at once a witty and an achingly open portrait of a soul desperate to overcome the torment of religious doubt.

  A few lines in, the speaker states the poem’s central problem most clearly: “I […] labor to admit you, but oh, to no end.” In other words, the speaker is trying to believe in God, to allow God into the soul, but keeps failing. This is the crux of the poem: it’s not so much that the speaker doesn’t believe in God but rather that the speaker cannot feel God in heart and soul, as the speaker once did.

  The word “admit” here, then, is a pun. It literally means to “let in,” as if God can be let in to the speaker’s soul. But it also puns on the sense of admitting something is true—the speaker is having a hard time admitting that God is real. “Reason,” the speaker’s ability to think logically, has been no help in this matter, pushing the speaker to further desperation rather than comfort; trying to proves God’s existence using logic isn’t necessarily convincing to one’s emotions.

  Furthermore, the speaker introduces this problem as a metaphor: “I, like an usurp’d town to another due, / Labor to admit you.” The speaker’s soul is like a “usurp’d town,” a town that has been conquered by an enemy. The identity of this enemy is unspecified, but it can be interpreted as the devil, or atheism, or any other force that leads people away from God. The implied solution, then, is that God must “break” into the “town” of the speaker’s soul, and set the speaker free. Doubt, then, is cast as a kind of painful imprisonment.

  In fact, the speaker seems to feel that faith is beyond the speaker’s control. Although the speaker keeps trying to let God in, that won’t work. Instead, the speaker begs God to force his way into the speaker’s soul. That’s why the poem begins, “Batter my heart.” It’s as if the speaker’s heart is a fortress, and God must invade that fortress. Through divine force, God can “make” the speaker “new,” transforming the speaker back into a devout Christian. The speaker’s crisis of faith, then, is so extreme that only extreme measures on the part of God can overcome it. The speaker sincerely wishes to return to God, but doesn’t have the strength to do it alone.

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• 

  Faith as Erotic Love

  The speaker makes a bold comparison between faith in God and erotic love. In fact, the erotic desire expressed here is not simply metaphorical. Rather, it can be thought of as a heightened form of sexuality, a desire for ecstasy on a spiritual, rather than simply physical, plane. The speaker begs for a rough—and consensual—seduction, one that fills the speaker with such passion that it eradicates all doubt in God. It is only through such passion, rather than logic or reason, that the speaker can truly overcome this crisis of faith.

  The speaker begins the poem by emphasizing the importance of the heart, which represents passion and love: “Batter my heart, three person’d God.” By beginning with this line, the speaker suggests that passion is central to faith. The speaker needs to feel passionate love for God in order to believe in him. This description also emphasizes the “force” of divine love. The speaker doesn’t ask God to gently slip into the speaker’s heart, but rather to break in. This isn’t a gentle seduction, but a rough one.

  In the middle of the poem, the speaker’s state is like that of someone who’s been separated from the person they love and forced to marry someone else: “Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain, / But am betroth’d unto your enemy.” The speaker wants to be with God, but is “betroth’d,” or married, to God’s “enemy.” This enemy can be interpreted as the devil, atheism, or anything else that causes one to lose faith. Whatever the case, the gist is clear. The speaker is comparing the situation to something like Romeo and Juliet, or any number of stories about ill-fated lovers.

  The speaker believes faith can only be recovered through “my heart”—through passion—rather than “Reason,” which is too easily led astray by powerful arguments. In lines 7-8, the speaker says, “Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, / But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.” Here, “Reason” means one’s ability to think logically about things. The speaker is saying that Reason should be providing arguments for faith in God. Instead, though, Reason falls for other arguments, “is captiv’d” by them. These arguments make it harder to let God into the speaker’s heart. That’s why God instead has to use passionate force to reach the speaker.

  At the end of the poem, the speaker begs not only to be rescued, but in turn imprisoned and “ravish[ed]” by God. More specifically, the speaker has a series of demands, including “Divorce me,” “break that knot again,” “imprison me,” and “ravish me.” Here, “Divorce me” means that the speaker wants God to divorce the speaker from the “enemy” the speaker has been “betroth’d” to. Then, the speaker will be able to be married to God—a benevolent “imprison[ment]” that is actually “free[dom],” because the speaker’s soul will now be at ease, free from spiritual distress.

  “Ravish” here means intense sexual pleasure, but it can also have forceful undertones. While the speaker isn’t necessarily referring to sexual assault, the word is nevertheless startling, especially in a religious poem. It captures the desire for a rough, forceful, spiritual seduction that guides the poem. The arc of this poem, then, follows an increasingly passionate plea for God to spiritually and forcefully return to the speaker.

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Holy Sonnet 14: Batter my heart, three-person'd God”

• Line 1

  Batter my heart, three-person'd God,

  "Holy Sonnet 14" is (surprise!) a sonnet. It is the 14th in a series of sonnets John Donne wrote from 1609-1611. These poems are all religious in nature, and deal with themes like death, divine love, and faith.

  Coming near the end of this sequence, "Holy Sonnet 14" depicts a speaker's desperate plea to God to return to the speaker's soul. What makes the poem unique and forceful is the way that the speaker frames this plea. The speaker boldly commands God to force his way into the speaker's soul, roughly seducing the speaker in what is an explicit comparison to sexual love.

  "Batter my heart, three person'd God," begins the speaker. The phrase "three person'd God" is an allusion to the Holy Trinity—Christianity's depiction of God as composed of three different entities: the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit. Here, the speaker's referring to the whole Trinity, begging the Trinity to attack the speaker's heart.

  More precisely, the speaker orders the Trinity to attack the heart. The order immediately puts the poem in a Christian context. This is going to be a poem about faith, about the speaker's personal relationship with God. Additionally, the word "Batter" suggests the battering rams that armies use to break through the doors of fortresses and city walls. This word choice, then, implicitly compares the speaker's heart to a fortress that must be broken into. This metaphor will come into play throughout the poem.

  For now, there are two observations to make about this initial command. First, that it's an instance of apostrophe, an address to a being that cannot respond. Throughout the poem, the speaker addresses God as "you," and God remains silent. This use of apostrophe gives the poem a certain quality—that of prayer. A poem that acts as a prayer or discusses the speaker's relationship with God is called a devotional poem, and that's just what "Holy Sonnet 14" is.

  Second, this initial phrase is a command. The speaker is ordering God around. That's a bold thing to do, because in Christianity it's usually the other way around—God commands mortals. Ordinary people are supposed to be humble and penitent, quietly asking for forgiveness. In fact, commanding God is not a very pious, reverent thing to do. At the same time, however, piety is exactly what the speaker's after. The speaker wants to grow more faithful, yet speaks in a manner that is against the tenets of the Christian religion. This is a paradox, a purposefully contradictory pair of gestures.

  The speaker will employ paradox throughout the poem. This in itself is nothing out of the ordinary. Renaissance poetry, especially love poetry (and this poem, it will become clear, is a kind of love poem), was obsessed with paradox. Renaissance poets used it to capture the complicated intensity of human passion. As the poem progresses, paradox will play a prominent role.

  As is traditional for English-language sonnets, the poem has 14 lines of rhymed iambic pentameter. This simply means that each line has five feet in a "da-DUM" rhythm. Its rhyme scheme is based on that used by Petrarch, with an added hint of Shakespeare—the two most famous sonnet writers in Italian and English.

• Lines 1-4

  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.

  

  

• Lines 5-6

  I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
  Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

  

  

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• Lines 7-8

  Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
  But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

  

  

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• Lines 9-10

  Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
  But am betroth'd unto your enemy;

  

  

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• Lines 11-12

  Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
  Take me to you, imprison me,

  

  

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• Lines 12-14

  for I,
  Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
  Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

  

  

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“Holy Sonnet 14: Batter my heart, three-person'd God” Symbols

• 

  The Heart

  The heart is commonly used in literature to symbolize passion and love, and that is the case in this poem as well. The heart also represents emotion and feeling more broadly, as opposed to logic and reason. When the speaker asks God to "[b[atter my heart," this is thus a request for God to appeal to the speaker's emotional core. Note how the speaker doesn't want God to "[b]atter" the speaker's mind or brain; the speaker doesn't want dispassionate rational or logical arguments about God's existence. Instead, the speaker insists that a return to faith requires passionate love—for God to focus on the speaker's emotional core. Only through this will the speaker rediscover faith.

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“Holy Sonnet 14: Batter my heart, three-person'd God” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Apostrophe

  Apostrophe is the guiding light of "Holy Sonnet 14." The speaker boldly speaks to God using a commanding and desperate tone, one that is laced with sexual connotations.

  The use of apostrophe to address God in a poem is nothing new. Devotional poems—poems that function as prayers—often use apostrophe, just people directly address God when they pray. George Herbert, an English poet who lived at the same time as Donne, wrote devotional poems in which humble speakers praise God and interrogate their own faithfulness. Tonally, however, Donne's poem is distinct. Herbert would never have addressed God as Donne's speaker does, in the manner of sexual partner.

  This poem doesn't address God like the almighty, purely good creator of the universe. Instead, the speaker treats God like a potential lover who's not being bold enough in his flirtation with the speaker. If God is going to win over the speaker (i.e., if the speaker is to feel faithful again), then God can't just "knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend." No, he needs to seduce the speaker with a dashing rescue followed by rough, "ravish[ing]" sex. Of course, all this is metaphorical. Or, at least, the speaker isn't speaking on physical terms. If the poem is erotic, it's erotic on a spiritual level.

  The way the speaker addresses God here gives a flavor of the kind of the spiritual relationship the speaker needs. Donne spent his early poetic career writing pretty explicit poems about seduction and sex. In those days, the addressees of his apostrophes were female lovers. Considering this personal history, then, it makes sense that even as Donne's speakers turn towards more religious considerations, the same underlying erotic urge is still there. Now, however, that urge is directed to God rather than women, and it becomes spiritual rather than physical.

  Additionally, it's interesting to note that the implied gender roles have been flipped. Whereas Donne's earlier erotic poetry has generally been interpreted as addressed by a male speaker to a woman, in this poem Donne's speaker takes on characteristics associated with Medieval and Renaissance femininity (helplessness, weakness of reason, the need to be rescued, sexual passivity) and God, the adressee, takes on a male role (strong, powerful, coming to the aid of women). In this sense, then, the poem reaffirms cultural assumptions about gender while also playing with them.

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• Paradox

  

  
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• Simile

  

  

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• Metaphor

  

  

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• Consonance

  

  

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• Assonance

  

  

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• Alliteration

  

  

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• Cacophony

  

  

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• Allusion

  

  

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• Caesura

  

  

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• Climax (Figure of Speech)

  

  

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• Polyptoton

  

  

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• Chiasmus

  

  

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• Enjambment

  

  

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"Holy Sonnet 14: Batter my heart, three-person'd God" 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.

• Batter
• Three-Person'd God
• O'erthrow
• Usurp'd
• Due
• Labor
• Admit
• Reason
• Viceroy
• Captiv'd
• Proves
• Untrue
• Lov'd
• Fain
• Betroth'd Unto
• Divorce Me
• Enthrall
• Chaste
• Ravish

• Hit repeatedly. One might also think of a battering ram, which is used to knock in heavy doors.

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Holy Sonnet 14: Batter my heart, three-person'd God”

• Form

  "Holy Sonnet 14" is a Petrarchan sonnet, one of the most famous forms of the sonnet made famous by the Italian poet Petrarch. A Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two halves: an octave (8 lines) and a sestet (6 lines). In line 9, the first line of the sestet, the speaker usually switches things up in some way, changing tone or the direction of the poem's argument. This is called the volta, or turn.

  Donne's poem is no different. The volta is directly signaled by the word "Yet." Here, the speaker changes the metaphor at play. Whereas the previous lines treated the speaker's soul like a town that had been captured by enemy forces, now the speaker focuses on love.

  Overall, Donne follows the traditional form of the sonnet pretty faithfully. (In closing with a final couplet, the poem nods to the English sonnet form as well—more on that in the Rhyme Scheme section of this guide.) Although the speaker describes what it feels like to have lost control of one's soul, feeling like an "enemy" has taken over one's mind, the form goes against this lack of control. In fact, the sonnet form seems to impose a sense of control on the poem from outside, just as the speaker asks God to impose control on the speaker's soul. Although the language and meter of the poem is a little thorny and bumpy, the overall form of the poem (for instance, the pretty consistent end-stops) contains this roughness within broader stability.

• Meter

  John Donne has a notoriously funky take on iambic pentameter, and that funkiness is on display in this poem. Traditionally, poets writing in iambic pentameter (five stresses per line in a da-DUM rhythm) have tried to match their language to that rhythm, perhaps carefully switching it up here and there for emphasis. Donne, on the other hand, seems to be fighting against his own meter from line 1.

  Some readers have criticized this aspect of Donne's poetry. At the same time, his poems have captivated people for centuries, so it's worth inquiring what exactly it is about Donne's unconventional language that works so well for the kinds of poems he wrote.

  As an example of what we're talking about, here is line 9, whose meter can be read multiple ways. Here's one scanning:

  Yet dear- | ly I love | you, and would | be lov'd fain

  Sometimes the poem is printed with the final words being "belovéd fain"—making the meter different still. Whichever way one choose to interpret the meter, it's clearly not a standard line of iambic pentameter—it could never be, since it has extra syllables.

  In lines like these, the speaker comes across as someone who is intelligent and troubled, grappling with contorted thoughts. As the speaker tries to articulate love for God and the need for the God's love in return, the meter captures how this is not an easy fact to articulate. This thought has taken work to reach, lots of introspection. At the same time, though, the poem's speaker is not shy and does not stumble over words. In fact, the speaker is bold, cavalier, flirty. The speaker wittily talks about these inner troubles, capturing them artfully in the form of a sonnet.

  The first line provides additional context for how to think about Donne's meter within this poem:

  Batter | my heart, | three-per- | son'd God, | for you

  This initial trochee (DUM-da) begins the poem with a stress, as if "Batter[ing]" the poem just as the speaker asks God to "Batter my heart." Extrapolating from this moment, the language of whole poem can be read as battered, bent out of shape by force of God and the speaker's crisis of faith.

• Rhyme Scheme

  For the most part, "Holy Sonnet 14" employs the structure of a Petrarchan sonnet. Interlinking rhymes divide the poems into two sections, an octave (8 lines) followed by a sestet (6 lines):

  ABBAABBA CDCDDD

  The poem veers from the standard Petrarchan sonnet in the last three lines. Petrarch himself would have normally used a rhyme scheme like CDCDCD or CDECDE.

  Donne's slight variation has a couple of effects. First off, he employs an eye rhyme in line 12, so that line might almost be read as not rhyming at all. Read in this way, it's as if a wrench has been thrown in the machine, this word "I" disrupting the flow of the poem. Such a disruption captures the way that speaker's mind itself (the speaker's "I") has become a disruption, leading the speaker away from faith. That's why the speaker needs God to take over, making the speaker's "I" subservient to the power of God.

  The second effect is that the poem ends on a rhyming couplet (DD). Ending a poem with a rhyming couplet is part of the form of the Shakespearian sonnet (where it's preceded by three rhyming quatrains). As its name suggests, this sonnet form was popularized by William Shakespeare, and so is a distinctly English form, as compared to the sonnets of the Italian poet Petrarch. This subtle nod to the Shakespearian form, whether intentional or not, gives the ending a similar feeling to Shakespeare's ending couplets:

  [...] for I,
  Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
  Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

  The simple, monosyllabic rhyme of "free" and "me" clicks the poem shut on its boldest assertion: that the speaker must be "ravish[ed]"—sexually consumed—by God.

  It should also be noted that there are a couple of instances of internal rhyme. As discussed in the assonance section of this guide, "break" and "make" rhyme in line 4, then "break" again and "Take" rhyme in lines 11-12. There are also a few subtler instances, such as "to," "due," and "you" in lines 5-6, as well "oh" and "no" in line 6. Similarly, the poem employs a slant rhyme with "stand" and "bend" in line 3. These moments add an additional sense of structure to the poem's syntax. Amid language that sometimes veers into a prose-like absence of assonance, these moments are like poetic spikes pinned into the language, keeping its thorny, rambunctious movements under control.

“Holy Sonnet 14: Batter my heart, three-person'd God” Speaker

• While the speaker remains anonymous, the poem plays off who Donne himself was, as well the kinds of personas Donne adopted in his earlier work.

  What's clear is that the speaker in this poem is undergoing a crisis of faith. The speaker boldly commands God to take over the speaker's soul, as if roughly and forcefully seducing the speaker. To modern readers, the speaker can be read as ungendered and open to interpretation and identification. To Renaissance readers, however, this would have been a distinctly feminine speaker (or at least someone embodying a—stereotypically—feminine role). Note how the speaker says:

  But [I] am betroth'd unto your enemy;
  Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
  Take me to you, [...]

  This is the kind of thing that women would say in Medieval and Renaissance literature. This trope is still recognizable to modern readers as the damsel in distress—the woman imprisoned against her will who must be rescued by a gallant knight. Of course, what's unusual here is that God is that gallant knight.

  It also would have been striking to readers that this is a male poet writing from the perspective of a woman. It's not that male Renaissance poets didn't write poems from the perspectives of women (they did). What's striking is that this isn't really a persona poem; it's not Donne explicitly writing as something he's not. Rather, it's a devotional poem, a combination of personal confession on the part of the poet and the kind of generalized speaker found in prayers, such as The Psalms in the Bible.

  This speaker must also be viewed in the context of poems from earlier poems in Donne's career, poems of erotic seduction and celebration. In these poems, witty speakers tried to convince women to have sex with them, or talk about how great this sex is while it's happening. "Holy Sonnet 14" clearly retains some aspects of these earlier speakers, such as boldness and sexual desire. Yet while the speakers of those earlier poems were implied to be masculine, now things have flipped—the speaker embraces a culturally feminine role. In Donne's historical context, this is an act of humility, one that acknowledges God as an all-powerful being to which the speaker must submit.

  Readers don't have to agree with these gender roles. Instead, a poem like this can help readers think about the role of gender in discussions of religion. It can help them examine how forms of power have affected how people view their relationship with God, and vice-versa. Additionally, this poem is a good example of how poetry and prayer can offer a space of play, a space where writers can mess with things like gender and power. While Donne by no means escapes the cultural assumptions of his time, at the same time this poem tweaks those assumptions, suggesting the fluidity of the soul and the difference between the roles people play in society and the roles they play in their imaginations and in states of prayer.

“Holy Sonnet 14: Batter my heart, three-person'd God” Setting

• "Holy Sonnet 14" can be said to take place in the speaker's mind. It uses metaphors to capture a purely abstract concept—the relationship between a human soul and God. These metaphors emphasize physical actions and suggest certain objects that give the poem a signature flair and immediacy.

  The most place-like quality of the poem is the comparison of the speaker's soul to "an usurp'd town," a town that has been taken over by enemy forces. At the same time, the speaker's body is often invoked or suggested. This happens from the very first phrase, "Batter my heart." Throughout the poem, the poems suggests acts of physically attacking the speaker's body, or capturing the speaker's body, or, finally, having sex with the speaker's body.

  These acts are metaphorical, where the speaker's body stands in for the speaker's soul. At the same time, these moments seem to fade into the metaphor of the speaker's soul as a town. It's as if the speaker's soul as a body is superimposed over the speaker's soul as a town, creating a metaphorical body-soul-town that seems to permeate the poem.

  Ultimately, the poem narrows in scope. While God starts outside speaker, battering the doors of the speaker's "town," by the end God has imprisoned the speaker. Things have narrowed down to what can be interpreted (again metaphorically) as a bedroom scene, an erotic encounter between the speaker and God.

Literary and Historical Context of “Holy Sonnet 14: Batter my heart, three-person'd God”

• Literary Context

  John Donne wrote in England during a period of the Renaissance called the Baroque period. The Renaissance was a flourishing of art, literature, and thought in Europe that followed the Middle Ages. During this period, artists and thinkers rekindled an interest in Greek and Roman culture while at the same time developing sophisticated forms of their own. This period is known for its Humanist qualities, meaning that people emphasized the abilities and depths of humans, placing human beings at the center of the universe, rather than God. Baroque art took the accomplishments of the Renaissance and made them more dramatic, complicated, and psychologically intense.

  Donne was also associated with a loose movement of writers called the Metaphysical Poets who wrote during this time. These poets were known for embracing long, complicated metaphors and incorporating scientific, philosophical, and theological learning in their poems. Like earlier Renaissance poets, they still focused on ideas related to love, sex, and faith, but how they wrote about these things grew quirkier. The sonnet was the premiere poetic invention of the Renaissance, and these poets continued to write sonnets, even as they moved away from the formulaic expressions that sometimes characterized earlier Renaissance poetry.

  Each of the metaphysical poets had their own complicated relationship with religion. Donne was an ardent Catholic who eventually converted to Anglicanism and became a minister in that church. Although Renaissance poetry is usually associated with love poetry, there were also devotional (religious, prayer-like) poems. One of the most famous writers of such poems was George Herbert, whose poems exhibit the kind of tortured psychology that is also on display in "Holy Sonnet 14." Yet Herbert would never have spoken to God so boldly and erotically. That is an approach distinct to Donne.

  Historical Context

  Donne, like many other Renaissance poets, such as Sir Thomas Wyatt and Andrew Marvell, filled many roles during his lifetime: he was a gentleman soldier, a civil servant, and later in life a famous minister. He was a man of the world, navigating elite circles while at the same time dealing with the constant threat of poverty. Like many poets of the time, he often had to seek out wealthy patrons to support them.

  Donne was raised in a Roman Catholic family during a time when Catholics were persecuted in England. After 1588, when England defeated the Spanish Armada—a massive fleet sent by Catholic Spain to invade England—it became increasingly difficult to be a Catholic in England. This pressure probably contributed to Donne's eventual conversion to Anglicanism, the English denomination of Protestantism that was also the state religion of Britain.

  Eventually, at the behest of King James, Donne even became a priest in the Anglican church. In the 1620s, he was one of the most celebrated ministers in England. On the basis of the many sermons he wrote, Donne has come to be regarded as an exceptional prose stylist.

  Written before any of this happened, "Holy Sonnet 14" can be seen as part of Donne's transition from amorous adventurer to pious minister. More broadly, it captures the uneasy relationship secular humanism and religious piety had in Renaissance England. This was something everyone had to navigate, as Europe journeyed out of the Middle Ages and into Modernity.

More “Holy Sonnet 14: Batter my heart, three-person'd God” Resources

• External Resources

  • Donne's Poem Sung in Doctor Atomic — The minimalist composer John Adams, along with director Peter Sellars, wrote an opera about the development of the atomic bomb. Here, Gerald Finley (as physicist Robert Oppenheimer) contemplates the power of the bomb and sings Donne's poem.

  • Donne's Poem Read Aloud — Listen to a recitation of "Holy Sonnet 14."

  • A Short Biography of John Donne — An in-depth essay on Donne's life and writing, along with additional poems, from the Poetry Foundation.

  • The Metaphysical Poets — A concise summary of the Metaphysical Poets along with links to the Poetry Foundation pages for several of them.

  • An Early Manuscript of Donne's Work — An early handwritten manuscript of Donne's poems, containing Holy Sonnet 14 among many others. From the digital collections of the New York Public Library.

  • Another Manuscript of Donne's Poetry — Another handwritten manuscript of Donne's work, this one from after his death and more ornately bound. From Harvard University's Houghton Library.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by John Donne

  • A Hymn to God the Father

  • Air and Angels

  • A Jet Ring Sent

  • A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day

  • A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

  • A Valediction: Of Weeping

  • Elegy V: His Picture

  • Holy Sonnet 10: Death, be not proud

  • Holy Sonnet 1: Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?

  • Holy Sonnet 6: This is my play's last scene

  • Holy Sonnet 7: At the round earth's imagined corners

  • Holy Sonnet 9: If poisonous minerals, and if that tree

  • Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness

  • No Man Is an Island

  • Song: Go and catch a falling star

  • The Apparition

  • The Canonization

  • The Dream

  • The Ecstasy

  • The Flea

  • The Good-Morrow

  • The Relic

  • The Sun Rising

  • The Triple Fool

  • To His Mistress Going to Bed