Holy Sonnet 10

John Donne 1633

Donne most likely wrote “Holy Sonnet 10” in 1609 but, like most poetry of that time, it did not appear in print during the poet’s lifetime. The poem was first published in 1633, two years after Donne’s death; during his life, however, his poetry became well known because it circulated privately in manuscript and handwritten copies among literate Londoners. “Holy Sonnet 10” belongs to the latter part of Donne’s output, the religious works known as his “Divine Poems,” famous because they dramatically create a feeling of a personal and often agonized relationship between the speaker and God. Before composing his “Divine Poems,” Donne had achieved fame for writing skillful and often cynical poetry in celebration of sexual love. But no strict chronological line splits his secular poems from his religious ones; for example, he probably wrote his great love poem “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” at about the same time as some of his religious works.

Donne apparently loved the intellectual challenges of paradox, one of the key characteristics of metaphysical poetry. He constructs “Holy Sonnet 10” around one of the central paradoxes of Christianity: that Christ’s sacrifice will ultimately mean the death of Death. The sonnet addresses Death directly as if it were a person, an example of the devices of apostrophe and personification. Systematically the poem instructs Death to give up its pride, since it will ultimately be defeated. Further, even though Death has power, its power is severely limited. Death also unknowingly does God’s work, since only through Death can humanity achieve the eternal life God promises.