Batter my heart, three-person’d 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 usurp’d town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

– John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV

Of all of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets (or Divine Meditations), this is his most famous. Using surprising turns of phrase and paradoxical imagery, Donne provokes our imagination with alarming images of a desperate man pleading to his God. He speaks like an imprisoned lover who cries to the Beloved to set him free—only, the captor, the enemy, is himself.

A Life

John Donne (1572-1631), a metaphysical poet, led a painful life. His father dying when Donne was only four seemed to set the tone. By the time Donne’s younger brother died of bubonic plague (1593), he had seen several of his relatives and fellow Catholics experience exile or martyrdom (his brother was in prison, where he caught the plague, for harboring a Catholic priest). Catholicism was outlawed in Protestant England at the time and brutally oppressed. Exhausted from grief and religious violence, Donne’s faith began to drift and the desires of the flesh and the world called out to him. One of Donne’s friends, Richard Baker, described Donne at this point simply as “a great visitor of ladies.”

Donne is often referred to today as one of the greatest love poets of the English language, particularly for his sensual and erotic poetry written in these young wilderness years. However, Donne’s life was about to change dramatically.

In 1601, while working as a clerk of Sir Egerton, Donne was introduced to the 16-year-old niece of Egerton, Anne More. Donne and More quickly fell in love, but knew that Anne’s parents would forbid their union, so they married in secret. When Anne’s father found out he had John arrested for several months. When John was released, his father-in-law had worked to make sure that John had lost his position with Egerton and then refused to give over Anne’s dowry.

For the next ten years, John and Anne lived in material poverty, humiliated and dependent on the charity of family to survive. John couldn’t find any consistent employment and tried to sell poems and satires here and there to make ends meet. Anne ultimately gave birth to twelve children, but tragically five of them died. John wrestled with an enormous guilt over the life he provided for his wife, but felt about himself an even darker despair: “I am rather a sickness or a disease of the world than any part of it and therefore neither love it nor life.” Then, in 1617, a few days after the stillborn birth of their twelfth child, Anne herself died. John collapsed in grief. He then wrote Biathanatos, a defense of suicide. 

A Poem

But grief and suffering can have a strange effect on us. During these dark years, before Anne died, John appears to have had a religious re-awakening. His conversion to Anglicanism may have at first been superficial for the sake of finding employment, but in time his faith seemed to prove abundantly sincere. In 1607, when Donne’s friends insisted he become a priest, he immediately refused because he felt himself too unworthy. But, impressed with Donne’s rhetorical skill, King James I insisted that Donne enter the employ of the Church. So, just two years before Anne died, in 1615, he took holy orders and was ordained as a priest in the Church of England. Donne quickly skyrocketed into fame—not because of his poetry, but because of his powerful and eloquent sermons. By the end of his life in 1631, his sermons were regularly circulated and he was known as one of the best preachers in all of England.

He seems to have always struggled with a lingering skepticism, but never one unwedded from sincere devotion. In the darkest days of his life, as he wrote Biathanatos, he also composed his Holy Sonnets.

All of Donne’s Holy Sonnets are powerful, but Holy Sonnet XIV is the most famous for good reason. 

The poem follows the typical sonnet structure of three stanzas and one couplet, fourteen lines of (near) iambic pentameter in total, following an ABBA / CDDC / EFFE / GG rhyme scheme.

Stanza 1

Batter my heart, three-person’d 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.

Batter my heart, three-person’d God. Here Donne identifies the problem: his heart. The whole poem is built on this paradox: Donne wants to love God, and yet it is Donne’s own sinful heart that restricts this love. He convulses with a violent passion to be free of his own perversity. He doesn’t want the gentleness of knock, breathe, shine, but the force of break, blow, burn. This, he bemoans, is the only way that he may rise and stand and be made new. God must violently o’erthrow Donne.

Stanza 2

I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.

Donne now compares himself to a walled city that has been taken over by usurpers or marauders. Donne feebly pulls at the city gates to let God in but to no avail. Reason, the steward God has given that should defend him from the oppression of wicked pleasure and vice, falls helplessly aside and proves weak or untrue. Logic and argument melt away in the heat of temptation, and all that remains are the cords of desire.

Stanza 3

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

The image now shifts to an arranged marriage between Donne and his flesh. He dearly loves God and would be pleased (fain) to be loved by God. But Donne is in a compulsory union to these dark desires that are God’s enemy. Halfway through this stanza, the desperation of the first stanza returns as Donne surprises us with the vehemence of his plea. God normally opposes divorce, but here Donne pleads with God to Divorce…untie or break that knot that has bound him to his sin. 

Conclusion

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

Enthrall is clever double-entendre, meaning “captivating one’s attention,” and “enslave.” Freedom for Donne is only found in God’s captivity, true liberty from the bondage of sin can only be found in enslavement to the Creator (Rom 6:18). Even more arresting, Donne knows that chastity will only come when he is first ravished by the beauty of God. If Donne is being forced into an unchaste union with sin by his weak flesh, he cries out for God to overpower his weakness with an intoxicating love and satiation that will, paradoxically, give rise to Donne’s own purity.

Reflection

I think Donne had either Psalm 51 or Romans 7 before him as he wrote this poem. Donne was a man familiar with the temptations of the flesh and knew the alluring power of desire and the subsequent weakness of his own resolve. Much like King David pleading with the Lord to create a clean heart in him, or the Apostle Paul lamenting Wretched man that I am!, Donne twists and writhes in agony over the pangs of guilt and longing he feels. As do all who sincerely wage war against the desires of the flesh. Donne’s words can serve as powerful prayer for all sinners who long for freedom, who long for a sight of divine beauty that will drive the darkness of lower desires from us.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Rom 7:21-8:1)