See Poem and talk below:<\/p>\n
Sonnet #14 by John Donne (1572-1631)<\/strong><\/p>\n Batter my heart, three-person\u2019d God, for you I, like an unsurp\u2019d town to another due, Yet dearly I love you, and would be love\u2019d fain, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, \n Welcome to 12th grade English. We\u2019re going to talk about Holy Sonnet 14 by John Donne, usually titled by it\u2019s first three words: Batter My Heart. There\u2019s a copy in your bulletin.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I have never been (so far anyway) a religious person in the ordinary sense of the word. In all the 38 years I taught, often in schools with religious affiliations, I never went to church or chapel if I didn\u2019t have to (I often had to). I was never anti-religious or scornful of religious persons, but it just wasn\u2019t my thing. If pressed, I would described myself as an agnostic \u2014 someone who reserves judgment on most religious topics: maybe there\u2019s a God who takes an interest in humans, and maybe there isn\u2019t; I just don\u2019t know.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n However, I could quite honestly tell my students that this poem (along with a couple by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and maybe a few others) helped me to get inside the head of someone who is religious. I don\u2019t mean to say that all religious persons think or feel alike, only that John Donne is one I think I understand. I hope that some of my students came to understand this point of view too.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n John Donne wasn\u2019t always a religious person. <\/span>Au contraire. <\/em><\/span>In fact, in the canon of English literature, there are two John Donnes. The young John Donne was one of the cavalier poets. These were young intellectuals who hung out in coffee houses and taverns, drinking, gambling, and wenching. Donne inherited a considerable fortune and spent it all in a few years of this kind of life. Some of his pals you might recognize: Robert Herrick, Sir John Suckling, Richard Lovelace, Edward Herbert. They wrote very clever, often very racy poems about, mostly, love. Donne wrote some excellent poems in this genre <\/span>some<\/strong><\/span> of which I could even assign my students.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n One of the trademarks of the cavalier poets was what is called a \u201cmetaphysical conceit.\u201d These were paradoxes comparing things that no would ever think could be compared. For example, imagine a bunch of guys sitting around a tavern and somebody says, \u201cBet you can\u2019t write a love poem about a flea.\u201d Donne wrote a poem called \u201cThe Flea\u201d in which he imagines a flea biting both himself and his mistress, combining in its body both of their bloods, and he says there\u2019s no shame in that union, so . . . .. In another poem, \u201cThe Sun Rising,\u201d Donne makes lovers\u2019 bed the whole world. The sun disturbs their lovemaking, and Donne tells the sun to go away and continue on around the world. Come back tomorrow. The poem ends:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \n I think that\u2019s enough for church, but remember the idea of a \u201cconceit\u201d when we look at Batter My Heart.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \n
\nAs yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
\nThat I may rise and stand, o\u2019erthrow me, and bend
\nYour force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.<\/p>\n
\nLabor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
\nReason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
\nBut is captive\u2019d, and proves weak or untrue.<\/p>\n
\nBut am betroth\u2019d unto\u00a0 your enemy;
\nDivorce me, untie or break that knot again.<\/p>\n
\nExcept you enthrall me, never shall be free,
\nNor ever chaste, except you ravish me.<\/p>\n