The Besieged Town
The besieged town is the dominant symbol in the poem, and it's a confusing one. The speaker likens himself to a town that has been taken over, but he wants God to attack the town in order to captur...
The Unhappy Engagement / Affair with God
In another metaphor that runs through this poem, the speaker describes an unhappy and inconvenient engagement with the "enemy," presumably the Devil. Where before, the speaker sets up God as an att...
Romance with God
So, in classic Metaphysical Poet tradition, Donne doesn't make anything super-explicit, but it's hard to read this poem without noticing some sexual overtones. "O'erthrow me, and bend Your force" a...
Contradictions
This poem is chock-full of contradictions. Why? Because what the speaker wants is fundamentally a contradiction – a physical manifestation of a being (God) who doesn't really exist in physica...