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

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

Today, Erika Kyba reads John Donne's Holy Sonnet XII, which offers a frame for looking at nature with new eyes.

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 12. This sonnet interacts with the themes of Holy Sonnet 9, in which Dunn questions why he must bear guilt for his sins while the rest of nature does not. Holy Sonnet 12 takes the opposite perspective, almost acting as a rebuke for Dunn's former way of thinking. Here, he observes that all of created nature stands.

at the service of mankind, and he questions why this is, since man is so undeserving. He asks why the elements supply him with life and food, even though they are pure than him, and further from corruption. He even calls them prodigal, which means lavish to the point of being wasteful. He then moves on to question why creatures like horses, bulls, and boars allow themselves to be subjected to human masters, even though they are prodigiously strong animals. He imagines them as only dissembling weakness, naively pretending to be weak when they could easily overpower men. The poet jests that these animals, who die by a single man's stroke, could easily swallow and feed upon all of mankind if they wanted to. Up until this point, Dunn has been addressing the animals

with thou, which in Renaissance England was a term of familiarity. But in lines eight and nine, we get a Volta, and Dunn begins to address them with you, which was the more respectful second person pronoun. He says, weaker I am, woe is me, and worse than you. By saying this, he subverts the idea of the chain of being, which organizes creation into a hierarchy and places humans above plants and animals. This subversion would probably have been wildly provocative at the time, and it places done in an attitude of humility rather than the self-assured entitlement that he began the Holy Sonnet Nine with. He continues, You have not sinned, nor need be timorous. Paradoxically, the animals, though guiltless,

cow to the demands of their human masters. Humans, on the other hand, have all of the guilt and none of the self-awareness that would lead to fear of God. Psalm 2 tells kings to serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. But how often do the greatest among us actually do this? Humans are notoriously prideful and inflexible to the will of God. And yet, Dunn invites the animals to wonder at a greater wonder, because created nature subdues all things to men whether or not they deserve it. But their creator, who is not bound by sin like man, or by his nature like the animals, submits himself to death for the sake of his very own creatures. It's not an act of weakness, but an act of love. And what's even more inexplicable is that God's creatures act as

his own foes, as they are the ones who crucify him. The crux of the whole poem is that we have been infinitely blessed by our creator, completely disregarding what we merit. With With all that said, let's dive in. Holy Sonnet 12 by John Dunn. Why are we by all creatures waited on? Why do the prodigal elements supply life and food to me, being more pure than I, simple, and further from corruption? Why brooks thou, ignorant horse, subjection?

Why dost thou, bull and bore, so seally dissembled weakness? And by one man's stroked eye, whose whole kind you might swallow and feed upon. Weaker I am, woe is me, and worse than you. You have not sinned nor need me, timorous, but wonder at a greater wonder, for to us created nature doth these things subdue. But their creator, whom sin nor nature tied, For us, his creatures and his foes, hath died. 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 the work of a famous Catalan poet.