Notes
1] The problem of the order and date of the nineteen poems called the "Holy Sonnets'' is very complicated. They have usually been numbered in sequence, but the traditional order has been convincingly questioned by Dame Helen Gardner in her edition of Donne's Divine Poems and is here not indicated. The first two in this selection were first published in 1635, the next five in 1633, the final two, entirely unconnected, not until 1894 and 1899 respectively. Most of the sonnets were probably written about 1609, but "Since she whom I lov'd" was written after the death of Donne's wife in 1617, and "Show me dear Christ" perhaps even later.
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Edmund Gosse, The Jacobean Poets (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1894). Reprinted 1970. ERI PR 545 J2 G6.
First publication date:
1894
RPO poem editor: N. J. Endicott
RP edition: 3RP 1.193.
Recent editing: 4:2002/2/5
Composition date:
1619
Form: Italian Sonnet (Variant)
Rhyme: abbaabbacdcdee