John Donne's Holy Sonnets

The entire poem is an example of apostrophe. The entire poem is addressed to Death. At the beginning the speaker states, “Death, be not proud” and at the end, “Death, though shalt die.” By framing...

In "Holy Sonnet VI," as in other sonnets by Donne (see especially "Holy Sonnet X" -- "Death be not proud..."), the poet presents a life/death paradox. Donne views death as merely a temporary rest...

What Donne is saying in the latter part of this meditation is that affliction is a treasure because it is through suffering that we are "matured and ripened by and made fit for God." The meditation...

In "Holy Sonnet IV," the metaphysical poet John Donne generates a powerful tension as meaning and emotion strive within and against the metrical form of the Petrarchan sonnet. Donne employs the...

Donne's 17th "Holy Sonnet" can be paraphased to determine its obvious "meaning," but it can also be analyzed to explore its effectiveness as a poem. The poem was almost certainly written in...

In this sonnet the three quatrain divisions each use a unique metaphor to explain the speakers feelings about being a sinner and his pleas to God to help him be a better person. In the first...

Some of the traits often found in John Donne’s “Holy Sonnets” are already apparent in the sonnet usually printed as the first in the collection – the sonnet beginning “Thou Hast Made Me.” Here are...

A good way to generate ideas for any writing about a literary text is to compare and contrast that text with another text. This process almost guarantees that your work will be detailed and...

The poem usually presented as the first of the Holy Sonnets -- the poem beginning "Thou hast made me" -- exemplifies many of the thematic and stylistic traits of the sequence as a whole. Such...

The two poems “Death, Be Not Proud” and “Batter My Heart, three-person'd God” are part of a series of nineteen poems called the Holy Sonnets, published in 1663, two years after John Donne’s death....

Although each of John Donne’s “Holy Sonnets” is by definition a unique and distinctive poem, the “Holy Sonnets” as a group nevertheless often share common traits. Among these traits are the...

The Holy Sonnets all express something about the importance of faith and discuss the speaker's or man's relationship with God. Sonnet 7 discusses the importance of repentance of one's sins during...

In Sonnet 17, the speaker talks about the loss of his loved one (perhaps his/Donne's wife). He says she has "paid her last debt to Nature" and this means she has died. Evidently, she has died young...

John Donne's Divine Meditations, sometimes also known as his "Holy Sonnets" were published posthumously, rather than during his lifetime, and seem to be private reflections on God and God's...

Donne begins the poem by noting that many have called Death (using capitalization to personify death as a being) "mighty and dreadful," although he is not. Lines 3-4 relate that the people who...

In "Holy Sonnet VI," which begins “This is my play's last scene,” John Donne uses the metaphor of a play and of a race for the course of his life on earth. He represents “heaven” as the desired...

This is a splendid question. The short answer is a resounding "yes." The longer answer is more complicated. It is possible to enjoy Donne's religious poetry even if one disagrees with his religious...

The representation of the divine in Donne's "Holy Sonnets" presents us with a picture of God as a stern, unbending taskmaster who places considerable demands on the devout believer. And in many of...

The best recent one-volume edition of Donne’s poems (The Complete Poems of John Donne, ed. Robin Robbins [Harlow: Longman/Pearson, 2010]) suggests a date for the composition of the poem from August...