Donne: A Religious 

Poet
By : Bhavya Bajaj

Roll Number: 7257

The intensity of Donne’s feeling and the inner conflict is reflected in his religious poetry.
His religious sonnets and songs are intensely personal and sincere. Donne was a Catholic by
birth. He felt humbled and persecuted like other Catholics of his age. Religion, for most of
the people, was a matter of accident.
Those who liked antiquity and tradition turned to Rome, those who disliked formality and
ritual turned to Geneva. But, religion should be, according to Donne, a matter of deliberate
choice, made after careful study and consideration. Many of the principles Rome did not
stand his intellectual inquiry. It is difficult to fix the precise date of his conversion. It is,
however, Convenient to assume that by 1598, when Donne entered Sir Thomas Egerton’s
service, he must have embraced the Church of England. Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Great
Seal, could never have employed a distinguished Catholic for important public duty.

Donne’s conversion to Anglicanism greatly influenced his poetry. Grierson calls this
conversion, a “reconciliation, an acquiescence in the faith of his country—the established
religion of his legal sovereign”. Probably, the Renaissance spirit, leaning towards
nationalism, was partly responsible for Donne’s change of faith. But the conversion caused
Donne some pangs and heart-searching. Dr. Johnson says: “A convert from Popery to
Protestantism gives up so much of what he has held as sacred as anything that he retains;
there is so much laceration of mind in such a conversion, that it can hardly be sincere and
lasting”. Undoubtedly, Donne felt this laceration of the mind and this conflict between the old
and the new faith. “Show me dear Christ thy spouse so bright and clear”. There was also the
other conflict in Donne—the conflict between ambition and asceticism, between the
prospects of civil service and the claims of a religious life. But after a number of years,
Donne continued to retain a soft corner for Catholics.
Main Aspects of Donne’s Religious Poetry
Donne was essentially a religious man, though he moved from one denomination to
another. His spirit of rational faith continued throughout his life. The following are the main
aspects of Donne’s religious poetry:
(i) Conflict and doubt
As a man of the Renaissance, he could not but question the assumptions and beliefs of
the Roman Catholic Church. Being born in a particular religion is one proposition and being
convinced of the Tightness of one’s faith, is quite another. As he was sceptical of the
religious dogmas of the Catholic Church, he adopted the Anglican faith, but even so his mind
was not at peace. He could not reconcile the inner conflicts and as such he prayed for God’s
mercy and grace, so that he might be able to build his faith on a sound foundation. In his A
Hymn to God the Father, he ultimately arrives at a firm faith. It is perhaps the culmination of
his spiritual quest.
(ii) Note of introspection
The metaphysical clement which is so evident in his love poems, finds expression of an
inner heart searching. He digs deep within himself in order to measure his sincerity and
devotion to God and above all his consciousness of sin and the need of penitence. His fear of
death—Donne must have seen many of his friends on their death-beds and their last struggles
—makes him repent for his past follies and hence his prayer to God for His mercy and
compassion. The Holy Sonets particularly maybe regarded as poems of repentance, and
supplications for divine grace. Donne’s intention is not to preach morality or to turn men to
virtue. Grierson writes in this connection: “To be didactic is never the first intention of
Donne’s religious poems, but rather, to express himself, to analyse and lay bare his own
moods of agitation, of aspiration and of humiliation, in the quest of God, and the surrender of
his soul to Him. The same erudite and surprising imagery, the same passionate, and reasoning
strain, meet us in both”.
(iii) The themes of his religious poetry
Donne found the contemporary world dry and corrupt. He felt that its degeneration
would lead to untold human misery. The main theme of his religious poems is the
transitoriness of this world, the fleeting nature of physical joys and earthly happiness, the
sufferings of the soul imprisoned in the body and the pettiness and insignificance of man.
Above all, the shadow of death is all pervasive and this makes him turn to Christ as the
Saviour. Even so, his metaphysical craftsmanship treats God as ‘ravisher’ who saves him
from the clutches of the Devil. Though Donne regarded the world a vanity of vanities, he
could not completely detach himself from the joys of the world and there is a turn from other-
worldliness to worldliness. However, we cannot doubt the sincerity of his religious feelings
and his earnest prayer to God for deliverance. His moral earnestness is reflected in his
consciousness of sin and unworthiness for deserving the grace of Christ He uses the images
of Christ as a lover who will woo his soul.
(iv) Parallelism with love poetry
There is a great similarity of thought and treatment between the love poems and holy
sonnets, though the theme is different. The spirit behind the two categories of poems is the
same. There is the same subtle spirit which analyses the inner experiences like the
experiences of love. The same kind of learned and shocking imagery is found in the love
poems:
Is the Pacific sea my home? or are
The Eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?
Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar.
All straits (and none but straits) are ways to them.
Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Ham, or Shem.
Similarly in his treatment of divine love, the poet uses sexual images in holy situations.
As for example:
Betray kind husband thy spouse to cur sights,
And let mine amorous soul court thy mild Dove
Who is most true, and pleasing to thee then
When she’s embraced and open to most men.
Critical survey of Donne’s religious poetry
There are two notes in Donne’s religious poems—the Catholic and the Anglican. The
Progress of the Soul leans towards Catholicism and it records the doubts and longings of a
troubled subtle soul. The following lines show the working of the mind and are full of bold
and echoing vowel sounds:
O might those sights and tears return again
Into my breast and eyes, which I have spent.
That I might in this holy discontent
Mourn with some fruit, as I have mourned in vain;
In mine Idolatory what showers of rain
Mine eyes did waste? What griefs my heart did vent?
That sufferance was my sin; now I repent.
Cause I ‘did suffer I must suffer pain.
The Progress of the Soul, though written in 1601 was published after his death, in 1633.
Ben Jonson called it “the conceit of Donne’s transformation.” Donne describes his theme in
the very first stanza.
I sing the progress of a deathless soul
Whom Fate, which God made, but doth not control
Pla’d in most shapes; all lines before the low
Yok’d us, and when; and since, in this I sing.
He describes the soul of heresy which began in paradise (in the apple) and roamed
through souls of Luther, Mahomed and Calvin and is now at rest in England:
The great soul which here among us now
Doth dwell, and moves that hand, and tongue and brow,
Which as the moon the sea moves us.
Donne moves from the aesthetic to the ethical plane of existence. His curiosity about the
microcosm and his scepticism find expression here:
Conclusion
Some critics question use of the metaphysical method in holy sonnets and religious
poems. Grierson, however, justifies use of the metaphysical method in these serious poems.
He writes: “Here, he recaptures the peculiar charm of his early love verse their best, the
unique blend of passionate feelings and rapid subtle thinking, the strange sense that his verse
gives of a certain conflict between the passionate thought and the varied and often elaborate
pattern into which he moulds its expression, resulting in a strange blend of harshness and
constraint with reverberating and penetrating harmony. No poems give more…the sense of
conflict of soul, of faith and hope snatched and held desperately….”
Donne’s religious poetry cannot be called mystical poetry. Donne does not forget
his self as the mystics do. His is always conscious of his environment, of the world in which
he lives and of his passionate friendships. As such his religious poetry lacks the transparent
ecstacy found in great religious poetry. Helen White writes in this connection: “There was
something in Donne’s imagination that drove it out in those magnificent figures that sweep
earth and sky, but whatever emotion such passages arouse in us, Donne was not the man to
lose himself. In another world beyond the release of death, he hoped to see his God face to
face, and without end. But he was not disposed to anticipate the privileges of that world in
this, nor even in general try to do so… The result is that in most of the mystical passages in
both his poetry and his prose, the marvellous thrust into the ineffable is followed by a quick
pull-back into the world of there-and-now with its lucid sense-detail and its ineluctable
common sense.”
Donne’s holy sonnets are deservedly famous and are remarkable. They embody his
deeply felt emotions in a language reflecting conscious craftsmanship.