"Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God" by John Donne

Before I say anything, I just wanted to point out that the verbs infused throughout the poem truly add dimension to the poem's message. For example, the second line of the poem has "knock" "breathe" "shine" "seek" and "mend." I think that the author does this to showcase the act of living out the motions in life. Toward the end of the poem, the speaker indicates that he has turned away from God. To me, his diction infused with verbs symbolizes that he is going through the motions every day without God beside him. He is just doing action after action but has no life behind the actions' meanings. This poem is confusing, but the sentence structures don't help either. For instance, "me should defend." At first, I read this and thought of cavemen speaking. Then, the more I thought about it, I started to realize that this symbolizes that the speaker is talking to God. Everything that the speaker says is on a lower level than God's power. This inadequate speaking style, to me, does serve some purpose. It's to show that the speaker is unworthy of God because he has turned away from Him. Also, rhymes are used throughout. Finally, I was struck by the simile "like an usurped town." To me, this means that the speaker is broken and cannot ever return back to his Creator. The tone of the poem is based off of repentance because the speaker deep down wants God to rescue him from his despair.