Point of View

"Batter my heart, three-personed God" is written from the first-person perspective of a speaker desperate for God's mercy. While the first-person point of view dramatizes an intimate encounter between the speaker and his addressee (God), the speaker's pleas also render him a representation for all Christian worshippers who might struggle in their commitment to faith. While the poem can also likely be considered autobiographical (the latter half of Donne's life was spent serving as Dean of St. Paul's), the speaker of the poem presents a number of universal Christian struggles like sin, doubt, uncertainty, and the recognition of a power greater than oneself.

Language and Meaning

While the language of "Batter my heart" is generally accessible, Donne often uses muddied or twisted syntax in order to obscure some of the meanings in the verse. Contemporary readers might struggle to follow Donne's sentence structure or to...