WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Poetry Fix: Holy Sonnet IX

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Today, Erika Kyba reads John Donne's Holy Sonnet IX, in which the poet wrestles with the themes of sin, guilt, and forgiveness.

Welcome to the Poetry Fix on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm your host, Erica Kaiba, bringing you your weekly fix of poetry from across time. Today we're reading John Dunn's Holy Sonnet Nine. Dunn begins this sonnet by questioning why it's only humans that can be damned and not anything else in the natural world. He looks around at nature and sees many unsavory elements, such as poisonous minerals. He even identifies traits that seem sinful in animals. such as lechery in goats and envy in serpents.

This leads him to a state of misery where he questions why he should stand under the threat of damnation and not these animals. He asks, why should intent or reason born in me make sins else equal in me more heinous? Notice how Dunn has buried the answer to his own question in these lines. It is precisely the intent to sin, paired with the reason that tells us sin is wrong, that makes humans responsible for what they do. Dunn then boldly asks why God threatens him, since mercy is not only easy but also glorious to him. This Job-like questioning of God's motives approaches a kind of tirade against the divine, and though Dunn never quite crosses that line, he gets dangerously close.

This is why we get the Volta in line nine. Dunn steps back from that brink, takes a good look at himself, and wonders, Who am I that dare dispute with thee? While God is all good, and Dunn has the reason to perceive this, he continues to pursue sin with intent, and he recognizes that this merits death. Dunn had rightly pointed out earlier that mercy is glorious to God, but now he recognizes that he erred in saying that mercy was an easy matter. Because God is both perfectly just and perfectly merciful, there must be a sacrifice that can properly atone for all the evil that humans have wreaked on the planet, starting from the fall.

And the sacrifice is nothing less than Christ's crucifixion. God does desire to wipe away Dunn's sins, but it isn't a matter of waving a divine hand and letting Dunn off with a slap on the wrist. It takes Christ's only worthy blood, together with Dunn's tears, his repentance, to drown his sins in a heavenly Lethean flood. Dun concludes the sonnet with a beautiful paradox.

He says that thou remember them, man's sins, some claim as debt, I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget. Essentially, there are those that refuse to let go of the memory of their sins, tortured by the knowledge that God remembers what they have done. But the poet concludes that it's actually all the more merciful that God remembers man's sin and then chooses to forget it. As Jeremiah 3134 tells us, I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember there soon no more.

Sin does incur a debt. There's no denying that. But the debt has been paid and thus forgotten by God himself. With all that said, let's dive in. Holy Sonnet 9 by John Dunn. If poisonous minerals, and if that tree whose fruit through death on else immortal us, if lettrous goats, if serpents envious cannot be damned, alas, why should I be? Why should intent or reason born in me make sense?

sins else equal in me more heinous, and mercy being easy and glorious to God, in his stern wrath, why threatens he? But who am I that dare dispute with thee? O God, O of thine only worthy blood, and my tears, make a heavenly, lethean flood, and drown in it my sin's black memory. That thou remember then, some claim is dead. I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget. If thou wilt forget. You've been listening to The Poetry Fix with Erica Kaiba. If you enjoyed this episode, consider following The Poetry Fix on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. And if you have any poems you want to see in a future episode, email your suggestions to the poetry fix at gmail.com.

Join me next week, and we'll be reading Percy Shelley's Ode to the West Wind.