As Due By Many Titles

rdf:langString As Due By Many Titles

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rdf:langString As due by many titles I resign ::Myself to thee, O God. First I was made ::By Thee; and for Thee, and when I was decay'd Thy blood bought that, the which before was Thine. I am Thy son, made with Thyself to shine, ::Thy servant, whose pains Thou hast still repaid, ::Thy sheep, Thine image, and—till I betray'd Myself—a temple of Thy Spirit divine. Why doth the devil then usurp on me? ::Why doth he steal, nay ravish, that's Thy right? Except Thou rise and for Thine own work fight, ::O! I shall soon despair, when I shall see That Thou lovest mankind well, yet wilt not choose me, And Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me.

rdf:langString "Sonnet II", also known by its opening words as "As Due By Many Titles", is a poem written by John Donne, who is considered to be one of the representatives of the metaphysical poetry in English literature. It was first published in 1633, two years after Donne’s death. It is included in the Holy Sonnets – a series of poems written by John Donne. According to the currently adopted sequence, the poem comes second in the order. It has also appeared in all of the proposed sequences so far - changes in positioning were, however, minimal, as the poem has remained in the first or second position ever since publication. "As Due By Many Titles" is characteristic for its "Calvinist influence in its reversal of the usually attempted move from fear to hope." As it begins misleadingly with a description of the speaker’s devotion to God in the octave, there is no clue that could prepare the reader for the rest of the poem, where the position of the speaker changes. There, he no longer praises God’s actions with passive acceptance. Instead, he begins to tremble in fear. The devil comes to the fore, and despite of everything God has done in favour of mankind, the speaker is not really sure whether he will gain eternal salvation. God might "exert himself to beat off the devil, but whether He does so will depend on His free, unobligated choice." Such a vision is due to the concept of Predestination – according to it, one cannot interfere with fate. Although it lies in the future in the case of the speaker of the sonnet, the choice has been already made, and there is nothing to be done against it. Thus, the doctrinal basis of the poem has been described as Lutheran and Calvinist.