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.
Thank you Kendall for reposting this favorite from a mutual favorite, John Donne. Quite a moving and eloquent statement of the wonderful paradox that is Christianity, where dying to self brings renewed and transformed life in this world and eternal life in the next, and being made the bondslave of Christ Jesus sets one truly free. Soli Deo Gloria!
I love John Donne, I love Gerard Manley Hopkins: each brings a passion and a color to the presence of God in our lives, and are such an antidote to the grim visions of so much that passes for Protestantism today.
Many don’t get the allusion to the tinker here, it is very important for understanding the poem.
See http://sederi.org/docs/yearbooks/07/7_16_ribes.pdf for a bit of explication.
This is basically my favorite poem period.