John Donne's "Divine Meditation 1"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2024

⏱️ 7 minutes

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Summary

Today marks the beginning of a week of Donne’s “Holy Sonnets” (interpreted generously to also include selections from his sonnet cycle, “La Corona”). In this first sonnet, he establishes the themes––human weakness, self-doubt, terrestrial anguish, and divine transcendence and consolation––that will return throughout the series. Happy reading!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, September 2nd, 2004. And today I'm kicking off a themed week that I'm very excited about. This one was actually suggested by a listener, and I think it's a fantastic idea. Over the summer, we did a week of Shakespearean sonnets,
0:21.8	and I was asked, well, when are you going to do a week of holy sonnets?
0:27.1	And that week is this week. So, all week, we will be featuring one of John Dunn's
0:34.8	holy sonnets. Today, we're beginning with divine meditations number one.
0:42.0	And because this is also Labor Day, it seemed like a fitting choice as it opens with the
0:48.4	discussion of work and works. I'll read the poem once, offer a few comments, and then read it one more time.
0:57.3	This is Divine Meditations No. 1.
1:02.6	Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay? Repair me now, for now mine end of haste. I run to death, and death meets me as fast.
1:13.1	And all my pleasures are like yesterday. I dare not move my dim eyes any way.
1:18.9	Despair beyond, and death before doth cast such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste by sin in it,
1:26.0	which it towards hell doth weigh, only thou art above,
1:30.3	and when towards thee, by thy leave I can look, I rise again. But our subtle foe so tempteth me
1:38.2	that not one hour I can myself sustain, thy grace may wing me to prevent his art,
1:45.6	and thou, like adamant, draw mine iron heart.
1:51.3	So there are two sonnet cycles or collections of sonnets that together make up John Dunn's
1:58.2	holy sonnets, as they've come to be called.
2:02.9	And this comes from the second.
2:12.1	The first is La Corona and the latter divine meditations. And this first divine meditation sets the thematic scene for what follows. The poet's sense of frailty, sense of inability, sense of weakness
2:22.6	in the face of temptation and their death, their unraveling, looming, and of course, the appeal to God in the face of all of those things.
2:36.7	There's something fun and archaic happening at the end of this sonnet.
2:43.3	The final couplet reads,
2:46.3	Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art, him being the tempter, the devil, and thou like adamant, draw my iron heart.
	...

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