SONNET FROM BEDFORD TEXT

Sonnet from Bedford Text

Sonnet from Bedford Text

The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, although a complicated example, are frequently used to show one's struggle to understand death through a Christian lens. Holy Sonnet X and Holy Sonnet XIV are the most frequently read because they deal directly, and in sophisticated ways, with the human struggle with death and salvation. In both of these texts, the poet presents a paradox, the most sophisticated of literary tropes, to make their complex moral point. In Holy Sonnet X (Death be not proud…), the poet meditates on the idea that death itself will die so that all shall live, and in Holy Sonnet XIV (Batter my heart …), the poet claims that he must be enslaved and enthralled by God in order to be set free. The complexity of this moral journey and the sophistication of how it is explained make it a prime example of the moral journey and development of a moral compass as being a necessity for acceptance into the literary canon of high school texts.

Also from the 17th century, John Milton's poetry meditates on the promise of salvation and the human response to this promise. His early poem, “On the Morning of Christ's Nativity,” juxtaposes the gentility of the baby Jesus with the profound demands that his birth and resurrection placed on humanity. The poet suggests that when celebrating the birth of Christ, one must also celebrate the search for human salvation through Christ, and is struck by how demanding this search is. Two poems that offer different, yet complementary, options are his twin poems “L'Allegro” and “Il Penseroso,” which present a lighthearted, mirthful approach against and in conjunction with devotion to contemplation and melancholy. His poem “Lycidas” shows a struggle to understand our ability to fulfill our vocations under the constant threat of our mortality, while his great epic Paradise Lost deals with humanity's fallen nature. Many of his poems seek to answer the call to God's vocation and moral demands in an individualized personal way, but some assert that they are also somewhat filled with Milton's own pride.

In the 18th century, Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, the two great satirists of the century, presented responses to the era's crisis of morality—the search to survive against the onslaught of colonialism, mercantilism, and capitalism. Pope's mock epic “Rape of the Lock” shows the foolishness of vanity, while “Eloisa to ...