How The Complete English Poems drew on Psalms
A documented line of influence: John Donne demonstrably engaged David’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Psalms
David · c. 500 BCE
BibleThe influenced
The Complete English Poems
John Donne · 1633
PoetsRelevance
7/10
On The Complete English Poems’s page
- Donne's Holy Sonnets borrow the Psalms' penitential voice — the cry of a soul bargaining, pleading, accusing God to His face
- He lived inside these texts: five Psalms a day as Dean of St Paul's, sermons built on them, his stanza forms following the metrical-Psalm tradition
- He even praised the Sidney–Pembroke verse Psalter in a poem of his own, calling its authors 'David's Successors' — the lineage was something he claimed
On Psalms’s page
- The original devotional voice — penitent, raw, addressing God directly — and the model Donne reaches for in the Holy Sonnets
- Donne recited five Psalms daily as Dean of St Paul's and preached on them systematically; he even wrote a poem praising the Sidneys as 'David's Successors' for their verse Psalter
- The metrical-Psalm tradition shaped his inventive stanza structures — read the Psalms and you hear the source of his religious music