"Holy Sonnet 14" by John Donne (1572-1631)

As I read this poem I got the sense that it was of some kind of a spiritual plea. With that said, it is identifiable that Donne created a command poem which allows the reader to dissect the poem a little bit better and grasps a better understanding of it. First I would like to look at the structure of the poem; it is clearly a sonnet (hence the title) if you count the lines. What I got out of this play is that the commands are structured around Donne's character-if it is not himself-going through a spiritual conquest with himself, pleading for "God's" assistance and rescue, since the character feels that he cannot do it by himself. In fact, "captivity" is referred to every third line after line one within the character. This character realizes that he cannot have the feeling of being free unless God does it physically (which would be spiritually to God's eyes). This is why "you" is capitalized throughout the poem, in respect for God. Also, when Donne refers to God as a "three-personed God," he is referring to God in his known three states to Christians: The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost. This also justifies how desperate the character is for God's assistance.
I feel that the character represents man as a whole; the emotional and spiritual favors that we constantly ask of God on a daily basis. I feel that this is why the poem stuck to me so well, because could physically, emotionally, and spiritually devote some kind of relationship to the character's actions in the poem.
Secondly, I would like to discuss the wording of this poem. Reading the poem over and over, and finding myself getting deeply involved with the character, I noticed that there were some thematic and phonemic relations represented in Donne's poem. For example, on line for "break, blow, burn..." gives off the same "b" sound (phonemic) and are descriptions of dissecting something: break down, blow away, and burn up (thematic). For this chapter, I found it most helpful the read the poems first and then read the content and helpful tools second. It showed me the difference in JUST reading a poem than actually "reading" the poem-dissecting and analyzing it.
Finally, I want to talk about the poem's sentence structure. The lines in the poem tend to switch subjects periodically-about every other line, and also changes predicate and tense. For example, on line three through six Donne exhibits his sentence structure of predicate, subject, and tense change, that almost seems contradictory at times.
"That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
. . . . .
Reason, Your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is [captived] and proves weak or untrue".

The character appears contradictory in a kind-of unsure way; it is like he/she seems to be unsure of himself to hold his own without God in some parts, but in other parts he/she seems confident that he/she is doing okay and is strong-minded. Donne gives the character a realistic approach to man's response to stress and exhaustion when we have tried all that we know to do and it fails, man always look towards God or another option to make them feel rejuvenated and confident again.