The Full Text of “Holy Sonnet 7: At the round earth's imagined corners”
1At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
2Your trumpets, angels; and arise, arise
3From death, you numberless infinities
4Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go:
5All whom the flood did, and fire shall, o'erthrow,
6All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
7Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes
8Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
9But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
10For, if above all these, my sins abound,
11'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace
12When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,
13Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
14As if thou hadst sealed my pardon with thy blood.
The Full Text of “Holy Sonnet 7: At the round earth's imagined corners”
1At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
2Your trumpets, angels; and arise, arise
3From death, you numberless infinities
4Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go:
5All whom the flood did, and fire shall, o'erthrow,
6All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
7Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes
8Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
9But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
10For, if above all these, my sins abound,
11'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace
12When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,
13Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
14As if thou hadst sealed my pardon with thy blood.
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“Holy Sonnet 7: At the round earth's imagined corners” Introduction
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"At the round earth's imagined corners" is one of English poet John Donne's Holy Sonnets, a 19-sonnet sequence in which Donne explores the struggles and consolations of his Christian faith. In this poem, a speaker tries his best to imagine Judgment Day, preparing himself to face God at the end of the world. Though he worries he might be the worst of sinners, he takes comfort in the idea that God's mercy is as infinite as the universe and that forgiveness is always there for the asking. This sonnet, like nearly all of Donne's poetry, was first published in Donne's posthumous collection Poems (1633).
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“Holy Sonnet 7: At the round earth's imagined corners” Summary
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Angels, sound your trumpets at the four imaginary corners of the globe. Get up out of your graves, you countless dead souls, and return to your far-flung bodies. Everyone must get up: those who drowned in Noah's flood and those who will die in the fire at the end of the world; those who died from war, starvation, old age, illness, political persecution, heartbreak, execution, or plain old bad luck; and those who will be alive at the Last Judgment and meet God without having to die first. But wait: please let all these souls go on sleeping for a while, God, and give me time to grieve. If I'm a bigger sinner than all of these dead souls, then it'll be a little too late for me to ask for your forgiveness when Judgment Day rolls around! Right here, on this humble spot, please teach me how to be sorry and atone for my sins: for my repentance will be just as effective as if you'd signed my official pardon in your own blood.
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“Holy Sonnet 7: At the round earth's imagined corners” Themes
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God's Judgment and Mercy
“At the round earth’s imagined corners” is one of Donne’s Holy Sonnets, a sequence of poems in which Donne grappled with the mysteries of his Christian faith. In this poem, a speaker envisions the Day of Judgment: the day upon which all the dead will rise up again and be judged by God. The speaker himself, whose sins “abound,” feels worried: he knows he had better get right with God before that day comes! If God can “teach [the speaker] how to repent,” though, the speaker trusts that he’ll be “pardon[ed]”—and in fact, his allusions to Christ’s sacrificial “blood” suggest he knows that God will go to great lengths to forgive sinners. God’s power and wrath are great, this poem suggests, but God’s mercy is even greater.
The Day of Judgment, the speaker imagines, will be an awe-inspiring spectacle: everyone who has ever died, whether from “war, death, age, agues, tyrannies,” or any number of calamities, will rise from the grave and be judged, making their way to Heaven or Hell. This judgment, the speaker solemnly observes, will be universal. Everyone who has ever lived and who will ever live will have to face God’s justice.
With this fate in mind, the speaker asks God to hold off on the Last Judgment for a while: he’s sinned so much that he needs time to repent properly. If Judgment Day were to roll around today, he feels, it would be a little “late to ask abundance of thy grace”—that is, to sincerely apologize for his sins and ask for mercy. He’d rather beg God to “teach [him] how to repent” now, while there’s still plenty of time to atone for everything he’s done wrong.
That all might sound rather grim, but the speaker finds comfort in the thought that, if he prays to God for help repenting, God will offer that help and “pardon” him. Indeed, he’s certain that God will “seal [his] pardon with [God’s] blood”—an allusion to the Crucifixion intended to remind readers that, in a Christian worldview, Christ has already sealed everyone's pardon in blood, dying to redeem humanity’s sins.
God’s judgment might be terrifying, the poem thus suggests, but God is also infinitely merciful, eager to help people to “repent” if they’ll only ask. Christ’s self-sacrifice offers the speaker consolation and courage, reminding him that God is ready to offer deep love and forgiveness to even the worst of sinners.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Holy Sonnet 7: At the round earth's imagined corners”
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Lines 1-4
At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels; and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go:As the poem begins, the speaker appears to be stepping into God's shoes, taking charge of one of the most important events in the Christian imagination: the Last Judgment, the day when the dead will rise from their graves and face God's justice. In an apostrophe to the "angels," the speaker kicks off the big event, also known as Judgment Day or the Apocalypse:
At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels; [...]The speaker is alluding to lines in the biblical Book of Revelation, a description of the Apocalypse in which angels are said to stand at the four corners of the earth. He's also making a clever point about how and where these events are taking place.
The speaker knows the earth is "round," a globe. Still, he beckons the angels to stand at its "imagined corners," corners it doesn't have. This mixture of the real and the "imagined" suggests that, in some sense, he's trying to reach beyond the limits of the known, everyday world—to imagine an event that will take place in this world, but also transform it in incomprehensible ways.
Perhaps that explains why he's putting himself in God's shoes here, too: issuing decrees, commanding the trumpets to sound. Imagining the coming Apocalypse, he's in a sense creating it, playing out his own end-of-the-world scenario.
However, the language he uses suggests he feels boggled by the sheer scale of the task. Even in the role of a commanding God, he can't fathom just how many souls will return from the dead on the fateful day. God proverbially sees the fall of every sparrow and can enumerate every single hair on every person's head. The speaker, by contrast, can only speak of "numberless infinities / Of souls," more souls than he can fit into his imagination. The pluralization of those "infinities" drives the point home: not just an infinity of souls, but infinite infinities.
Still, the speaker does his best within his limits, calling those "infinities" to "arise, arise" (with an insistent diacope rather like the blare of those angelic trumpets) and return to their "scattered bodies."
This poem is one of Donne's "Holy Sonnets," a 19-poem sequence in which he examined the mysteries and struggles of his Christian faith. The sonnet shape is compact and fairly strict:
- It uses 14 lines of iambic pentameter (that is, lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "Your trum- | pets, an- | gels, and | arise, | arise").
- It also uses a set rhyme scheme. Here, the speaker uses the scheme of a Petrarchan sonnet, which divides into an eight-line introductory octave rhymed ABBA ABBA and a six-line closing sestet, here rhymed CDCDEE (though Petrarchan sestets can use any pattern of C, D, and E rhymes).
The rigorous demands of this form suits the speaker's task: to face the terror, grandeur, and hope of Judgment Day, trying to imagine what this final cosmic holiday will really mean.
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Lines 5-8
All whom the flood did, and fire shall, o'erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe. -
Lines 9-12
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For, if above all these, my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace
When we are there. -
Lines 12-14
Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
As if thou hadst sealed my pardon with thy blood.
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“Holy Sonnet 7: At the round earth's imagined corners” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
This "Holy Sonnet" is built on a foundation of religious allusion; this is a poem about what it means to live with Christian faith.
The poem opens with a vision of Judgment Day: the end of the world as foretold in the surreal, prophetic Book of Revelation, which forms the last chapter of the Bible. On this day, Christian tradition holds, the souls of the dead will return to their "scattered bodies," everyone who's ever lived will rise from the grave, and God will judge them.
Besides alluding to Revelation's image of four angels—one for each "corner of the earth"—kicking off the festivities, the speaker evokes the sheer overwhelming scale of this day with a list of all the ways the dead have died: "All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, / Despair, law, chance hath slain," he says, will get right back up again.
For that matter, everyone who the "flood did, and fire shall, o'erthrow" will be there—an allusion to traditional biblical stories about world-ending divine judgment:
- The "flood" here refers to Noah's flood, in which God drowns nearly everyone on earth in order to start afresh.
- Afterwards, God assures Noah (who, along with his family, is one of the few righteous survivors of the flood) that God will never destroy the world by water again, a pact known as the "covenant of the rainbow."
- Later Christian tradition holds that God's promise not to drown the world doesn't mean he won't destroy it again: next time, the Apostle Peter warns, he'll just use fire!
- These lines again stress the universality of the Last Judgment. Everyone who died in the ancient Flood will be there; so will everyone who's going to die in the coming apocalyptic fire.
The living—those who will "never taste death's woe"—will be there too, of course! That thought makes the speaker feel rather uneasy. If Judgment Day were to come today, he worries, he'd be among the crowd of the living, waiting to be judged, and he's not so sure he'd come off well. He feels his "sins abound"—that is, that he's got a big heap of sin to atone for. This is why, in his closing lines, he begs God to "teach [him] how to repent" for his bad behavior.
Really, though, he's only half worried about this: his faith assures him that God wants to forgive him. That comes through in his last allusion. When, speaking to God, he declares that learning to repent would be "as good / As if thou hadst sealed my pardon with thy blood," he's reminding readers that Christianity claims God has already done exactly that. The reference here is to the Crucifixion, in which Christ—God in human form—sacrifices himself to atone for humanity's sins.
This act, the speaker believes, shows that God absolutely longs to forgive sinners, and is willing to go to great and terrifying lengths to do so! In merely asking for God's help with repentance, the speaker can trust that God forgives him already.
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
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Apostrophe
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Repetition
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Asyndeton
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"Holy Sonnet 7: At the round earth's imagined corners" 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.
- Numberless
- O'erthrow
- Dearth
- Agues
- Hath, hadst
- Slain
- Mourn a space
- Abound
- 'Tis late
- Lowly
- Repent
- Thou, thy
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Countless.
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Holy Sonnet 7: At the round earth's imagined corners”
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Form
This poem is a sonnet—a "Holy Sonnet," in fact, one of a sequence of 19 poems on Christian faith that Donne wrote on his way to becoming a clergyman. Here's what that means formally:
- Like any typical sonnet, this one is built from 14 lines of iambic pentameter (lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in: "'Tis late | to ask | abun- | dance of | thy grace").
- More specifically, this is a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet, which means it divides into two sections: an eight-line opening octave, rhymed ABBA ABBA, and a six-line closing sestet, rhymed CDCDEE in this case (some Petrarchan sonnets use a different pattern).
- Readers might break the poem into three quatrains and a final couplet based on its rhyme scheme (more on that in the Rhyme Scheme section of this guide). This makes it also look a bit like an English sonnet and lends the ending some extra punch.
Poets often use this elegant form to distill a single intense theme or question, introducing a new twist at the turning point between the octave and sestet (also known as the volta, Italian for "turn"). This poem does precisely that:
- The octave is dedicated to a prophetic vision of the Christian Judgment Day.
- The sestet zooms in on the spot of "lowly ground" where the speaker stands now, begging God to "teach [him] how to repent" before that great and terrible day rolls around.
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Meter
Like the vast majority of sonnets, this one is written in iambic pentameter. That means each of its lines uses five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. Here's how that sounds in line 11:
'Tis late | to ask | a bun- | dance of | thy grace
While this meter forms the poem's backbone, the speaker hardly ever uses a purely iambic line! Instead, all sorts of variations help his voice to sound urgent and passionate, even a little wild. For instance, listen to the rhythm of the first line:
At the | round earth's | ima- | gined cor- | ners, blow
Here, the speaker pushes the first two stresses into the poem's second foot, creating a spondee (an emphatic foot with a DUM-DUM rhythm)—and thus unrolls this vision of the whole "round earth" with a little extra metrical drama.
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Rhyme Scheme
As a Petrarchan (or Italian) sonnet, this poem uses a traditional rhyme scheme with a little flexibility built in. Here's how it goes:
ABBA ABBA CDCDEE
All Petrarchan sonnets start with that ABBA ABBA pattern (which marks off the octave, the first eight lines). The remaining six lines (or sestet) can use various mixtures of C, D, and E rhymes. Here, the speaker closes with a firm EE couplet, sealing the poem off as he imagines God "seal[ing his] pardon" in blood. (Final couplets like this are more common in English sonnets.)
Note that, while a lot of the rhymes here sound slant to modern ears ("good" and "blood," for instance), they were likely perfect or close to it in Donne's 17th-century London accent.
The strict-yet-flexible shape of a Petrarchan sonnet is a good fit for one of Donne's "Holy Sonnets," in which a speaker both grapples with God's demands (and his own sense of sinfulness) and falls back on God's endless mercy.
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“Holy Sonnet 7: At the round earth's imagined corners” Speaker
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The poem's speaker, like the speaker in all of Donne's "Holy Sonnets," can be interpreted as Donne himself. Always a passionately religious man, Donne wrote this sequence of poems about a decade after he made the momentous decision to convert from Catholicism to Protestantism, a big deal in 17th-century England. (More on that in the Context section.) Not long after, he would become a clergyman, devoting himself fully to his faith.
Here as in many of the Holy Sonnets, the speaker addresses God directly, begging to be taught, led, improved, or even destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up. Certain he must be one of the world's greatest sinners, he's also got a rock-solid faith that God can and will redeem him if he only asks.
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“Holy Sonnet 7: At the round earth's imagined corners” Setting
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Picturing the Day of Judgment, this poem sweeps over the whole world from imagined corner to imagined corner, visiting every spot where a body lies waiting for the Resurrection. The last days of the world, the speaker imagines, will be grand, awe-inspiring, and terrifying: no soul will be able to evade God's justice.
But that day is yet to come—and after that prophetic vision of the future, the poem lands on the "lowly ground" where the speaker stands. The poem's movement from a universal to an everyday setting suggests that repentance is a matter of grand importance, but also the humble daily work of each individual soul.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Holy Sonnet 7: At the round earth's imagined corners”
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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.
Like the vast majority of Donne's poetry, "At the round earth's imagined corners" didn't appear in print until several years after his death in 1633, when his collection Poems was posthumously published. This poem is one of the "Holy Sonnets," a sonnet sequence in which the speaker grapples with the pains and rewards of his faith (sometimes in strangely erotic terms).
Donne's mixture of wit, 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 A.S. Byatt.
Historical Context
The passionate faith Donne expresses in this poem emerges from an era of turmoil in European Christianity.
John 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 frequent use of Catholic language (for instance, in his love poem "The Canonization") hints that he didn't altogether abandon the beliefs of his youth.
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More “Holy Sonnet 7: At the round earth's imagined corners” Resources
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External Resources
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A Brief Biography — Learn more about Donne's life and work from the British Library.
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Donne and the Metaphysicals — Learn more about the 17th-century literary movement for which Donne is the poster boy.
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Donne's Legacy — Watch a celebration of Donne filmed at St. Paul's Cathedral, the iconic London church of which he was the Dean.
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to the actor Richard Burton performing the poem.
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The Poem as a Song — Listen to a musical setting of the poem by composer Willametta Spencer.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by John Donne
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