John Donne (1572-1631) was raised as a Roman Catholic, but he also studied the ideas of other branches of Christianity. After many years of attempting to make a successful secular career, he became a priest in 1615. He and some of his contemporaries became labeled as the “metaphysical poets.”
The following poem is one of nineteen “holy sonnets” that Donne wrote around 1609-11. It was published in The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne (edited by Charles M. Coffin; published by Random House, Inc., in 1952). I have modernized the spelling of the poem and added my paraphrase and notes.
Holy Sonnet IX
If poisonous minerals, and if that tree,
Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damned; Alas; why should I be?
Why should intent or reason, born in me,
Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?
And mercy being easy, and glorious
To God; in his stern wrath, why threatens he?
But who am I, that dare dispute with thee
O God? Oh! of your only worthy blood,
And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,
And drown in it my sins’ black memory;
That you remember them, some claim as debt,
I think it mercy, if you will forget.
[If poisonous chemicals, if the forbidden tree in the garden of Eden, which enabled the first man and woman to sin and lose eternal life (see Genesis 2:16-17; 3:1-24), if lustful goats, if envious snakes cannot be thrown into hell, then why can I be? Why should my intentions and will, or my ability to think and reason, make my similar sins more awful? And if mercy is easy and wonderful to God, why in his great anger does he threaten to throw my soul into hell? But who am I that I should argue with God’s ways? With Jesus’ sacrificial blood and my tears of repentance, make a heavenly flood of forgetfulness and within it drown the memory of my sins. (Lethe was the river of forgetfulness in ancient Greek mythology. This river in the underworld would cause people to forget their past when they drank from it.) Some say that God remembers our sins and holds them against us as a debt. But I would find God merciful if he forgot my sins.]