Holy Sonnet I
Thou hast made me, and shall Thy work decay ?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste ;
I run to death, and Death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.
I dare not move my dim eyes any way ;
Despair behind, and Death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh.
Only Thou art above, and when towards Thee
By Thy leave I can look, I rise again ;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one hour myself I can sustain.
Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art
And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.

I have long believed John Donne to be the greatest of poets. I feel dreadfully sorry for other people who have not examined the great depths of John Donne. Oh what a wonderful thing is metaphysical conceit and metaphysical wit. There are so many things in Wit that I wouldn’t have caught had I not concentrated my MA on Donne. *sigh* As I was showing Wit to my class yesterday, I couldn’t help but giggle at someone else who agrees on the loveliness of Donne:

In the edition you chose, this profoundly simple meaning is sacrificed to aesthetical punctuation:
And Death-capital D-shall be no more—semicolon!
Death—capital D—comma—thou shalt die— exclamation point!

If you go for this sort of thing I suggest you take up Shakespeare.

Gardner’s edition of the Holy Sonnets returns to the Westmoreland manuscript source of 1610, not for sentimental reasons, I assure you, but because Helen Gardner is a scholar. It reads:
And death shall be no more, comma,
Death thou shalt die.

Nothing but a breath, a comma, separates life from everlasting life. It is simple really. With the original punctuation restored, death is no longer something to act out on a stage, with exclamation points. It’s a comma, a pause.

This way, the uncompromising way, one learns something about this poem, wouldn’t you say? Life, death. Soul, God. Past, present. Not insuperable barricades, not semicolons, just a comma.”