Holy Sonnet 9

What do you get when you combine a Roman Catholic scholar who leaves the Catholic Church, an education at Oxford University and the ability to write suggestive and religious poems simultaneously? A John Donne! Or rather, the John Donne, poetry savant.

Donne was born into a strictly Roman Catholic household, but the Reformation caused him to convert to the English Church. In 1609, Donne began writing his poems that would eventually comprise his 19-piece collection called the "Holy Sonnets." One of the poems, Holy Sonnet IX, focuses on the distinction of being good and being sinful.

HOLY SONNET 9
If poisonous minerals, and if that tree
Whose fruit threw death on else-immortal us,
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damned, alas! why should I be?
Why should intent or reason, born in me,
Make 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? Oh, of thine only worthy blood
And my tears, make a heavely Lethean flood,
And drown in it my sin's black memory.
That thou remember them some clair as debt;
I think it mercy if thou wilt forget.

Words, terms, and phrases to make this poem make more sense:
1. line 1: "tree"= The Tree of Knowledge that encompassed good and evil in the Garden of Eden.
2. line 3: "lecherous" = sexual connotation; lusty.
3. line 3: "serpents envious" = referring to humanlike qualities that would usually be damnful, but in the case of a serpent it is not possible.
4. line 11: "Lethean flood" = the speaker is asking for forgiveness, and in mythology, the river Lethe caused total forgetfulness.
5. line 12: "sin's black memory" = refers to the speaker's sins which have left a bad mark on God's memory about him.

And what is this sonnet about?
At first, the speaker seems to be talking to God and rationalizing why he, as a human, shouldn't be damned for his sins if there are so many other creatures in existance that have similary sinned. Soon, these short questions stop and tough demeanor starts to wear off and the speaker grovels and asks God to forget his sins. He says that because God is so merciful, and providing mercy for a person must be so easy, God should be able to gloss his sins over, and not use them as a debt towards him.

So what about it..
1) What is the significance of using various non-human things when talking about sin?
2) The speaker asks many questions in this poem, but which one is the most important?
3) Is the speaker attempting to convince God to forgive him of his sins through pity or reasoning?
4) Could forgetfulness really relieve sin like the speaker is hoping?
5) How does Donne's tone change from line 4 to line 10-12?

Analysis:
It is interesting to think about the fact that these Holy Sonnets were written years after Donne left the Catholic Church and began to follow Protestant ways. The Reformation, during the time when these poems were written, was a time when many decided to meditate on the closeness and truthfulness of their faith towards God. Unlike followers of the Catholic faith, Protestants believed in a closer connection to God and the ability of obtaining righteousness and salvation through faith alone. It was believed by many that the Catholic Church had ulterior motives and had let God not be the center of attention.

In this poem, the beginning seems to be asking God why he the speaker has sinned, as if the person speaking was the still-Catholic Donne telling God that he was still a religious man. As the poem progresses, it shows the transformation of Donne into a Protestant mindset and asks God to forget his sins. His sins, the forgetting of God's importance, are clearly burdening Donne and he hopes that God can see that he is still faithful and religious now that he has regained a connection with God.