The Commemoration of George Herbert, Priest & Poet - 2016.02.27
Please not that yesterday's poem and commentary are attached as a pdf file.
Batter my heart, three-person'd God John Donne (1572-1631)
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.
… for Donne, faith and prayer needed to involve the whole person and not just a pious set
of behaviours and responses that form only one aspect of life. And therein lay the
problem. Donne was aware that he was a highly complex, deeply conflicted person
whose desires and interests, opinions and beliefs, pulled him in many different directions.
Moreover he was immensely independent and strong-willed, while knowing and
believing that at its heart his Christian vocation involved a renunciation of ego and a
humility of which he felt scarcely capable. All this comes out in his poem in which he
calls on God to take the active role, to step in and take over, in a dazzling series of vivid
metaphors and paradoxes. He opens the sonnet abruptly and dramatically:
Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
Here the image is drawn from metalwork, and specifically the trade of the tinker - a bold
metaphor for the work of God Almighty! It is as though he is a broken vessel that needs
to be completely remade, beaten again into shape. It is not enough just to knock out the
old dent, to breathe on the copper and shine it up; Donne needs to be completely
reworked. The effect of these short, sharp, kinetic verbs each pummelling in in the
imperative voice is breathtaking: knock, breathe, shine … bend … break, blow, burn …
make! But the end and purpose of it all is not to destroy but to ‘make me new’. Though
these words were written 400 years ago many contemporary Christians will recognize
Donne’s dilemma and the necessity of this prayer, the need to be thrown down, to be
knocked off one’s perch, to be taken back to a beginning in order to start again with God.
In the next six lines Donne switches metaphors and draws his image from siege warfare,
something he knew about first-hand as he had sailed with Raleigh and Sidney and taken
part in the siege of Cadiz. But here he gives his metaphor a particular nuance: it is not a
