The metaphysical poets of seventeenth century England are characterized by their use of conceit, or extended metaphor, and their common themes of love, religion, and death. John Donne is considered by many to be one of the most predominant figures of the metaphysical poetry movement. He wrote in many different forms and styles over the course of his life, but all of his works flow with his signature sensual style. Even after he became a cleric for the Church of England, his religious poetry and prose still included puns, paradoxes, and unlikely metaphors. The Holy Sonnet #14, alternatively titled “Batter my heart” is one of Donne’s most famous sonnets. Through conceit and form, Donne successfully executes an unlikely comparison between religious or holy love and common, earthly love and the violent metaphors within the sonnet ultimately comment on the extreme need for willpower in faith.
The speaker in Holy Sonnet #14 addresses God in a completely unconventional, and somewhat offensive, way. Consider the Lord’s Prayer verse from Matthew 6:9-13:
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us of our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil...
The Lord’s Prayer is respectful and humble. Those who use the prayer are asking God for help, but not in a demanding or expectant way. The speaker in Holy Sonnet #14 speaks directly to God with a direct and aggressive tone, commanding him to do what he says. In the first quatrain, Donne opens the poem by demanding God to “Batter my heart, three-personed God” (1). “Batter” can refer to a violent, physical assault consisting of multiple blows or it can mean to criticize or defeat. The speaker wants God to beat up and criticize his heart (i.e. his soul) to give him a wake up call and bring him back onto the right path. In the last three lines of the first quatrain, the speaker compares God to a craftsman:
… 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. (1 - 4)
The second and fourth lines parallel each other: the verbs in line 2, “knock,” “breathe,” “shine,” and “seek to mend,” compare to the verbs in line 4, “break,” “blow,” “burn” and “make me new.” In the second line, the verbs conjure up images of a craftsman who must be gentle with his work, like a glass blower or a woodworker, in order to mold his work into perfection. In the third line, however, the speaker says that he will try to “rise and stand” against God, showing that the passiveness of the God in the second line will not “o’erthrow” him. The way line 3 is worded, “That I may rise and stand,” implies that the speaker can not control his rebelliousness and that going against the grain is something that is inevitable. This is what leads to the intensifying of the verbs in line 4; the fire (burn) and hammering (blow) conjure up the image of God as a smith who must “break, blow, [and] burn” the impurities out of the speaker, for this is the only way to make him “new” again. By switching the metaphor he applies to himself from glass or wood to metal, the speaker trying to show that he has become hardened spiritually and emotionally and that it will take God more fire and force than usual to change him into a new state.
The second quatrain begins with a similie: “I, like an usurped town…” (4). This is the only instance in the sonnet where Donne makes an explicit comparison. This is significant because the image of a town under siege carries over into the other two quatrains: in line 1, the battering of the heart could represent a battering ram ramming against the gates of a fortress, and in line 12, “imprison” could take on a new meaning. Even the idea that God is the rightful “lord” of the town parallels to the image of God as the speaker’s true love in the third quatrain. However, the entire second quatrain also brings forth a new theme, reason versus faith:
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue. (4 - 7)
There has always been a debate among Christians on the proper way to live one’s life. In Isaiah 1:18, the Lord says “Come now, and let us reason together” but there are multiple instances within the Bible in which it is said that the “just shall live by faith” and it says in Proverbs 3:5, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” In Holy Sonnet XIV, the speaker tries to “admit” God into his “town”, but has no success, because Reason, who exists in the speaker as God’s viceroy, has also been defeated by the usurper of sin and temptation. This quatrain contains the speaker’s main conflict and also Donne’s resolution to the reason versus faith debate: even though reason is God’s right-hand man, and exists in all of humanity, one can not reach full potential through reason alone because, as seen in the next quatrain, a close, intimate relationship with God is necessary.
The speaker is not failing because he does not have faith or reason, but more because he does not have the willpower to stay away from temptation and sin. In James 4:7, it says “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” In the third quatrain, Donne uses this idea of submission to God and resistance of the devil in a shocking metaphor in which the speaker is a lover engaged to Satan:
Yet dearly I love you, and would be love fain,
But I am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I... (8 - 12)
God is the one whom the speaker truly loves, but since the speaker has gone so far down the path of sin as to “marry” sin itself, i.e. Satan, only God can break off the marriage. This is an interesting choice in metaphor considering fidelity and sacred marriage are two things one associates with God, so having God represent the “other man” in this quatrain is meant to emphasize how desperate the speaker is for help. He would ask the one force in the universe to do the exact opposite of its highest values, just to help him return to a good Christian life. Also, Donne switches the gender of the speaker in this metaphor, alluding to the image of a weak damsel who must be rescued by the handsome lover from the would-be ravishings of the old, creepy man she is forced to marry. The gender switch is meant to emphasize just how weak the speaker has become in the presence of sin and temptation, for in Donne’s time, women were viewed as the weaker sex.
The concluding couplet is the source for most of the controversial themes and metaphors surrounding the Holy Sonnet #14. The sexual overtones are turned all the way up as the speaker says “Except you enthrall me, never shall I be free, / Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.” Even though the sexual imagery was probably intended by Donne to be taken symbolically, one can not help but interpret the lines literally after the first reading. In his article “Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV,” Craig Payne refers to this image as the “Divine Rape.” Payne says that this image of the victim become chaste through rape is “at first startling, [because] we are not accustomed to such spiritual intensity” (210). Though spiritual intensity may be a factor, the real unsettling factor is that in this final couplet, Donne compares his Christian God to the gods of Greek myth: the speaker must be “enthralled” and “ravished” in order to stay pure, just as those visited by the Greek gods and goddesses were. By comparing this concept of sexual passion to holy virtue, Donne is ultimately commenting on the need for an obvious presence in his life; he needs God to force himself upon him, “imprison” him, and keep him on the proper path of Christianity.
Holy Sonnet #14 is a part of a larger collection of sonnets written by John Donne. They are not dated and do not necessarily go in any particular order, so the fact that this poem is the fourteenth is of no real significance. What is important, however, is the form. The poem follows the form of a Petrarchan sonnet: fourteen lines with three quatrains and a rhyming couplet, and an abbaabbacdcdee rhyme scheme, although some of the end rhymes are questionable (enemy / I) and most of the lines’ meter don’t always fit iambic pentameter. The typical subject of a Petrarchan sonnet is a woman, and within the lines her beauty is compared in cliche ways as the writer attempts to exaggerate his love for her. Donne uses his unexpected subject of God in this predictable form as his final symbol in order to emphasize all of his unusual comparisons (God as craftsman, lord, and lover) and bring together the sonnet’s overall theme of earthly versus holy love. The typical “love poem” form represents the main conflict of the poem: the speaker is still trapped by lust and sin even when trying to write a plea to God to help him. The fact that the lines do not fit perfectly into the form is Donne’s way of representing the desperation and need to break free from his trapped soul. Just as the typical Petrarchan lover longs for his beautiful object of desire, in Holy Sonnet #14, Donne’s speaker longs, quite incessantly and violently, for the attention, affection, and obvious presence of God.
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