Batter My Heart Three-Person’d God

First off, let’s be clear.  This poem is bizarre!


    What’’s going on with the whole sex/religion connection?  I’ll admit, there were two things, back when I was in high school, I did more of in church than pray...watch the girls in their church clothes and blink at the ceiling fans to make them look like they stopped.


    Donne, in this complex argument, uses three three extended metaphors to entreat God to help him be good.  First, he says he’s like a broken pot and God should beat him back into shape like a tinker would..


     I think the word “tinker has something to do with tin, which is what cooking pots were in part made of. The tinker would come down the street, and people would pay him to beat dents out of their pots, reattach handles, like the one on the left, or fix holes.  They would use a “tinker’s dam” made out of clay or sand to block a hole in a pot while they poured molten metal on it. When the metal hardened, they would break up the dam. So if someone doesn’t give a tinker’s dam, they place little value on something.  For the purposes of understanding this poem, it’s more important that you understand that a tinker would beat the heck out of a pot to get it back in shape.


    Then, Donne says he’s like a conquered city that is trying to let the good guys in to get rid of the conquerors. 


    Finally, and here’s the sex part, he says he’s like a bride who is being married to the wrong guy, the devil, duh, and wants God to steal him away and rape him.  Yes, I said rape.  I told you this was a crazy poem

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.

“Three-person’d “ refers to the Holy Trinity.  See, though, how he wants God to pound on his sinful heart, to make it good again. He wants God to tinker with him, to hammer and burn him back into shape.

Think of viceroy like vice-president, only “roy” means king.  So, because Reason, God’s right hand man, betrayed him, the devil has conquered Donne.  Now Donne wants to let God in, but the gates the devil has set up seem too strong for Donne to breach.

This last metaphor hinges on the tradition that a marriage has to be consummated, that the couple has to couple at least once, before it’s official.  If the people didn’t make love, the marriage could be annulled.  SO....Donne has found himself betrothed to the devil, and feels like he can’t escape, kind of like Buttercup in “The Princess Bride.”  If God would just steal him away, imprison him, enslave him, so he’s not in charge of himself, and rape him, he would be God’s bride.  Too late, Lucifer.  We consummated!

Because being with God is a good thing, he would feel free in God’s prison.  And because God is pure, coupling with him would make Donne pure (chaste).

Where do I get this?  “Thralls” were like serfs in Nordic and Germanic countries. To “ravish” originally meant to rape.  Weird, that these words both have positive connotations now.  I guess if a subject enthralls me, I’ve become a slave to it.  If  I think a woman looks ravishing, she has conquered me against my will.

Notice that Donne wants God to do all the work.  John can’t resist temptation, so he entreats the Lord to kick the devil’s butt for him.  It’s a kind of an abrogation of responsibility, like when Flip Wilson used to dress up like the oversexed Geraldine and claim “The Devil made me do that,” about all his/her indiscretions.