Last week our small group from church watched the movie Wit (based on the play of the same name) about a woman dying of cancer who in her pre-cancerous life was a serious scholar/professor of the poet John Donne. It is an excellent, excellent film. Emma Thompson is brilliant. The young child's book Runaway Bunny as an allegory of the soul?
The poem the movie returns to repeatedly is Death Be Not Proud, but the Donne poem that resurfaced for me was"Holy Sonnet" #14:
Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
but is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor even chaste, except you ravish me.
2 comments:
hi sarah! just wanted to say hi and congrats on little lincoln! a lady in our congregation just named their son lincoln too, he's about 2 months old now. cool name. sorry i haven't said congrats earlier, but you know what its like with a newborn and toddler! hee hee.
oh and i meant to say that i love that peom by donne, its my favorite. well, so many of his are my favorite
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