Thou Hast Made me

Hello!

I am Nidhi jethava and I am my student of Mk Bhavnagar university. In this blog I am going to discuss about 'Thou Hast Made Me' by John Donne.

Holy Sonnets: Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?

BY JOHN DONNE

Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?

Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste,

I run to death, and death meets me as fast,

And all my pleasures are like yesterday;

I dare not move my dim eyes any way,

Despair behind, and death before doth cast

Such terror, and my feebled flesh doth waste

By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh.

Only thou art above, and when towards thee

By thy leave I can look, I rise again;

But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,

That not one hour I can myself sustain;

Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art,

And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.

Explanation :- 

‘Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?’ by John Donne is a fourteen-line sonnet that is contained within one block of text. The lines follow a consistent pattern of rhyme that conforms to the traditional Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnet form.

The poem begins with the speaker asking God if he’s going to allow his creation, the speaker, to fall into “decay.” He has lived a bad life and now all his sins are catching up with him. The speaker can feel his body falling apart around him and he needs God to fix him as soon as possible. If he cannot get back some control over himself he knows that he will walk straight to death, and perhaps enter into Hell.

The poem concludes with the speaker comparing his own “iron heart” to God’s strong, metal-like presence in his life. God acts as a magnet, drawing the speaker in closer and closer and winging him away from his sins and the Devil.