"Holy Sonnet: Batter my heart, three-person'd God"
By John Donne

Transcription, correction, editorial commentary, and markup by Students and Staff of the University of Virginia, Rachel Retica
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Sources

London : M. F. for John Marriot, 1633We have taken our text from the Text Creation Partnership's digitized version of the 1633 edition of Donne's poems: https://github.com/textcreationpartnership/A69225/blob/master/A69225.xml. Donne's poems circulated in manuscript during his life time, and were not issued in a print version until this edition, which came out after Donne's death in 1632. The long "s" of the original has been modernized, but we have otherwise kept the original spelling. The title page has been sourced from Princeton University Special Collections.

Editorial Statements

Research informing these annotations draws on publicly-accessible resources, with links provided where possible. Annotations have also included common knowledge, defined as information that can be found in multiple reliable sources. If you notice an error in these annotations, please contact lic.open.anthology@gmail.com.

Original spelling and capitalization is retained, though the long s has been silently modernized and ligatured forms are not encoded.

Hyphenation has not been retained, except where necessary for the sense of the word.

Page breaks have been retained. Catchwords, signatures, and running headers have not.

Materials have been transcribed from and checked against first editions, where possible. See the Sources section for more information.

Citation

Donne, John. "Holy Sonnet: Batter my heart, three person'd God". Poems, by J. D., With Elegies on the Authors Death, M. F. for John Marriot, 1633 , 200 . Literature in Context: An Open Anthology. http://anthologydev.lib.virginia.edu/work/Donne/donne-holysonnet-battermyheart. Accessed: 2025-01-20T17:52:27.158Z

Linked Data

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TEST Audio
[TP] POEMS,
By J. D[onne].
WITH
ELEGIES
ON THE AUTHOR'S
Death.

 LONDON.
 Printed by M. F. for [J]OHN MARRIOT,
and are to be sold at his shop in St Dunstans
Church-yard in Fleet-street. 1633. 10. (XIV)numbering numbering The first number comes from Helen Gardner's renumbering of the Sonnets in her 1952 edition of The Divine Poems, and the Roman numeral in parentheses retains the sequence given in editions printed from 1635 to 1669. - [RR]
1Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you 2As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend; 3That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee, and bend 4Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new, 5I, like an usurpt towne, to another due, 6Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end, 7Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend, 8But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue, 9Yet dearely I love you, and would be lov'd faine, 10But am betroth'd unto your enemie, 11Divorce mee, untie, or breake that knot againe, 12Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I 13Except you enthral mee, never shall be free, 14Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

Footnotes

numbering_ The first number comes from Helen Gardner's renumbering of the Sonnets in her 1952 edition of The Divine Poems, and the Roman numeral in parentheses retains the sequence given in editions printed from 1635 to 1669.