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~ HSPart COMMENTARY Poet/Persona Ricks (1966, 190) describes HSPart as "a prayer affirming the poet's new...found religious confidence." Stampfer (1970, 265-66) remarks that there is in HSPart a "stately proces... sion of couplings," which are emblematic of the coupling of God's will with the speaker: the father and son share one kingdom, the son having a double interest; the twice...slain lamb has two wills, invested with the legacy of a joint kingdom; grace and the Holy Spirit revive the victims of law and letter; and the speaker is a "disrupted two" that must come to a coupling-the two of body and spirit, torn apart, must arrive at a jointure of body and earth, spirit and God. Stampfer says that the prayer in the last line of the poem represents a culmination of the twelve son... nets in 1633, the "entire bent" of the twelve...sonnet sequence blending "the speaker's will to the will of God." In the closing prayer, he concludes, there is no qualifica... tion or confrontation between man and God, but a single will, belonging to them both. Sicherman (197 I, 86-87) points out that the speaker knows in HSPart that God's last command "Is all but love" (1. 14), and thus he emerges with the faith that Christ conquers death and the knowledge that God's grace compensates for human insuf... ficiency. Young (1987, 38) observes that even though Donne's persona in many of the Holy Sonnets is "hag...ridden by doubts of his own sincerity, and hence by doubts of the validity of his sense of grace," the "Calvinist dynamic" does not ultimately "domi... nate" the Holy Sonnets. Young points out that HSPart, Donne's last sonnet in 1633 and 1635, ends with "the law of love-not faith-as the ultimate Christian obliga... tion." According to Young, Donne here is not "taking a position on the theology of justification and grace; he is praying for grace and exhorting himself to love." Young finds Donne "typical" of devotional poets in England in the seventeenth century, "who, though generally Protestant, are not, in their poetry, so much militant propo... nents of the Reformation as Christians confronting God." Strier (1989, 379) finds HSPart to be "carefully and explicitly Protestant-deny... ing that man can fulfill the moral law, a position that it characterizes as being 'argue[d] yet' [1. g]-but it never generates any emotional intensity," with the final prayer "ambiguous, either a personal plea for grace or a generalized plea for human solidarity." ~ HSPart COMMENTARY Poet/Persona Ricks (r 966, r90) describes HSPart as "a prayer affirming the poet's new-found religious confidence." Stampfer (r 970, 265-66) remarks that there is in HSPart a "stately procession of couplings," which are emblematic of the coupling of God's will with the speaker: the father and son share one kingdom, the son having a double interest; the twice-slain lamb has two wills, invested with the legacy of a joint kingdom; grace and the Holy Spirit revive the victims of law and letter; and the speaker is a "disrupted two" that must come to a coupling-the two of body and spirit, torn apart, must arrive at a jointure of body and earth, spirit and God. Stampfer says that the prayer in the last line of the poem represents a culmination of the twelve sonnets in r633, the "entire bent" of the twelve-sonnet sequence blending "the speaker's will to the will of God." In the closing prayer, he concludes, there is no qualification or confrontation between man and God, but a single will, belonging to them both. Sicherman (r 97 r, 86-87) points out that the speaker knows in HSPart that God's last command "Is all but love" (1. r4), and thus he emerges with the faith that Christ conquers death and the knowledge that God's grace compensates for human insufficiency . Young (r987, 38) observes that even though Donne's persona in many of the Holy Sonnets is "hag-ridden by doubts of his own sincerity, and hence by doubts of the validity of his sense of grace," the "Calvinist dynamic" does not ultimately "dominate " the Holy Sonnets. Young points out that HSPart, Donne's last sonnet in r633 and r635, ends with "the law of love-not faith-as the ultimate Christian obligation ." According to Young, Donne here is not "taking a position on the theology of justification and grace...

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