The Holy Sonnet

Sonnet

A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...

s, also known as the Divine Meditations or Divine Sonnets, are a series of nineteen poems by the English poet John Donne

John Donne

John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...

. Never published during his lifetime but widely circulated in manuscript, they have become some of Donne's most popular poems and are widely anthologized.

Dating

They were composed between 1609 and 1610, in a period of great personal distress for Donne, with physical, emotional, and financial hardship, as well as religious turmoil: originally a Roman Catholic, Donne did not officially join the Anglican Church until 1615. The Holy Sonnets reflect these anxieties.

Manuscript and publication history

The dating of the composition of the poems has been tied to the dating of Donne's conversion to Anglicanism. His first biographer, Izaak Walton

Izaak Walton

Izaak Walton was an English writer. Best known as the author of The Compleat Angler, he also wrote a number of short biographies which have been collected under the title of Walton's Lives.-Biography:...

, claimed the poems dated from the time of Donne's ministry (he became a priest in 1615); modern scholarship agrees that the poems date from 1609-10, the same time period during which he wrote an anti-Catholic polemic, Pseudo-Martyr. "Since she whom I loved, hath paid her last debt," though, is an elegy

Elegy

In literature, an elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.-History:The Greek term elegeia originally referred to any verse written in elegiac couplets and covering a wide range of subject matter, including epitaphs for tombs...

 to Donne's wife Anne, who died in 1617, and two other poems, "Show me, dear Christ, thy spouse so bright and clear" and "Oh, to vex me, contraries meet as one" are first found in 1620.

The Variorum Edition of John Donne's work proposes three sequences for the total of nineteen sonnets. The first, the "original sequence," contains twelve sonnets; the second, the "Westmoreland sequence," contains nineteen; and the third, the "revised sequence," contains the twelve sonnets of the original sequence in a different order. The relationship between these sequences is explained by Cummings, in his Seventeenth-century poetry: an annotated anthology: two sequences of twelve poems, having eight poems in common, with the addition of three later poems make up the nineteen.

Many of the poems circulated in manuscript; "Oh my black soul" for instance survives in no fewer than fifteen manuscript copies, including a miscellany compiled for William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The twelve sonnets of the original sequence were published two years after Donne's death in the 1633 collection Songs and Sonnets, probably from manuscripts overseen by Donne himself. From an earlier manuscript comes the 1635 collection called Divine Meditations, containing the revised sequence. The total of nineteen sonnets is found in the 1620 Westmoreland manuscript (now in the New York Public Library

New York Public Library

The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...

, prepared by Rowland Woodward, a friend of Donne's; this manuscript contains the sixteen different sonnets of the Holy Sonnets (1633) and the Divine Meditations (1635), plus the three later poems.

Original sequence

1. Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay
2. As due by many titles I resign
3. O might those sighs and tears return again
4. Father, part of his double interest
5. O, my black soul, now thou art summoned
6. This is my play's last scene, here heavens appoint
7. I am a little world made cunningly
8. At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
9. If poisonous minerals, and if that tree
10. If faithful souls be alike glorified
11. Death be not proud
    Death Be Not Proud
    Death Be Not Proud is a memoir by American author John Gunther, taking its name from Holy Sonnet X by John Donne. The story was portrayed in a 1975 TV movie starring Robby Benson as Johnny Gunther and Arthur Hill as John Gunther.-Story:...
    
    , though some have called thee
12. Wilt thou love God, as he thee! then digest

Westmoreland sequence

1. Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay
2. As due by many titles I resign
3. O might those sighs and tears return again
4. O my black soul! now thou art summoned
5. I am a little world made cunningly
6. This is my play's last scene, here heavens appoint
7. At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
8. If faithful souls be alike glorified
9. If poisonous minerals, and if that tree
10. Death be not proud, though some have called thee
11. Spit in my face you Jews, and pierce my side
12. Why are we by all creatures waited on?
13. What if this present were the world's last night?
14. Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
15. Wilt thou love God, as he thee! then digest
16. Father, part of his double interest
17. Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt
18. Show me, dear Christ, thy spouse so bright and clear
19. O, to vex me, contraries meet in one

Revised sequence

1. As due by many titles I resign
2. O my black soul! now thou art summoned
3. This is my play's last scene, here heavens appoint
4. At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
5. If poisonous minerals, and if that tree
6. Death be not proud, though some have called thee
7. Spit in my face you Jews, and pierce my side
8. Why are we by all creatures waited on?
9. What if this present were the world's last night?
10. Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
11. Wilt thou love God, as he thee! then digest
12. Father, part of his double interest

Spelling and punctuation as found in Cummings, Seventeenth-century poetry.

Quotations and adaptations

• Nine of the sonnets were set to music for tenor and piano by Benjamin Britten
  Benjamin Britten
  Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
  
   in August 1945.
• The line "Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so" (HS 10) is often quoted, for instance in the 1998 Margaret Edson
  Margaret Edson
  Margaret Edson is an American playwright. She graduated with a B.A. in Renaissance History from Smith College, and received a master's in English literature from Georgetown University...
  
   Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit
  Wit (play)
  Wit is a play written by American playwright Margaret Edson. Edson used her work experience in a hospital as part of the inspiration for her play. Wit received its world premiere at South Coast Repertory, Costa Mesa, California, in 1995...
  
   and the movie of the same name
  Wit (film)
  Wit is a 2001 American television movie directed by Mike Nichols. The teleplay by Nichols and Emma Thompson is based on the 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning play of the same title by Margaret Edson....
  
  .
• The first line of HS 14, beginning "Batter my heart three-personed God," are cited by artists such as Hendrik Hofmeyr
  Hendrik Hofmeyr
  Hendrik Pienaar Hofmeyr is among the younger generation of South African composers. Born in Cape Town, he furthered his studies in Italy during 10 years of self-imposed exile as a conscientious objector. While there, he won the South African Opera Competition with The Fall of the House of Usher...
  
   and in productions such as John Adams' opera Doctor Atomic
  Doctor Atomic
  Doctor Atomic is an opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars. It premiered at the San Francisco Opera on 1 October 2005. The work focuses on the great stress and anxiety experienced by those at Los Alamos while the test of the first atomic bomb was...
  
  .

External links

• Holy Sonnets audio at LibriVox.org
  LibriVox
  LibriVox is an online digital library of free public domain audiobooks, read by volunteers and is probably, since 2007, the world's most prolific audiobook publisher...