Batter My Heart

Batter My Heart is the opening phrase of John Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV. Addressing the Christian Trinity, the speaker asks for a radical renewal of a self that cannot fully surrender its own resistance. Images of a besieged town and conflicting allegiance give spiritual struggle an urgent dramatic form. The final paradoxes join captivity and release, expressing the speaker's dependence on divine grace. The poem's force belongs to this language of prayer and inward transformation, where ordinary oppositions are pressed beyond their usual meanings.