Batter My Heart or Holy Sonnet XIV by John Donne

Vocabulary

usurp’d : taken through force or rebellion
viceroy: governor; ruling power
labour: work, energy
betroth’d : promised to marry
enthrall: captivate
chaste: innocent, pure
ravish: seize or rape
to no end: without success

Introduction

This is one of the most famous poems of Donne. Its theme is bondage to sin. It says that God alone can deliver a person from bondage to sin. The poem is therefore cast as a prayer to the Triune God to enter the battle of the Speaker against Satan and deliver him. At one point, it appears that the speaker is talking about conversion and at another point about sanctification. But the overarching concept of deliverance from
Sin and Satan are large enough to cover both of them. The poem expresses the desire to be free from sin.

Summary/Commentary

This is a vintage Donne poem in the energy of its actions and the fireworks of its figurative language. Donne loved the more intellectual figures of speech like the far-fetched comparison between two ostensibly dissimilar things and paradox (which requires a reader to find truth in an apparent contradiction).

The thought pattern in this sonnet falls into three parts, which largely supersede the units of the sonnet form. Lines 1 – 4 are a petitionary prayer for God to remake the speaker (encapsulated in the final petition of line 4 – “make me new”). Lines 5–10 drop the petitionary mode and declare the speaker’s current state of spiritual bondage; the simile “like an usurped town” (line 5) sums up this movement of the poem. In

lines 11 – 14, the speaker returns to the petitionary mode, with the prayer “take me to you” (line 12) being a summary of these lines.

The image patterns in the poem also override the units of the sonnet format and only partly correspond to the topical units noted above.

The images (e.g. verbs) in the first four lines derive from the work of a metal tinker as it mends pots and pans. The frame of reference in lines 5–8 is military and political, with references to the besieged area, the “viceroy,” the security, the captivity, the “weak” and the “untrue” (transition word to the next unit dealing with love relations). Lines 9 to the middle of line 12 use the imagery of the relationship of marriage: “Dearly I love,” “Would be lovéd,” “Betrothed,” “Divorce,” “Untie, or break the knot,” and “Take me to you.” The next line and a half take their frame of reference from imprisonment, and the last line is erotic in their imagery.

It is in the essence of poetry to speak a language of analogy (metaphor and simile) and, as always, Donne throws himself into the business with zeal.