Jesse Sharpe PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

Donne’s Incarnating Words 77
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was God’s partner here, and furnished thus
Half of that sacrifice which ransomed us? (30-32)
Mary shares in the ‘woe’ of her son. Jesus is of her flesh, and she is his protector, and in
this she is also a contributor to the divine miracle that Christianity centres on with the
birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus. God does not just work through a body given to
Jesus, but also through the body of Mary.
The next sonnet in the cycle is ‘Temple’, in which Donne shows Jesus, while being
fully human, possessing a divinity which sets him apart from other children his age.
Donne equates Jesus’ ability to debate authoritatively in the Temple to the divine nature
showing itself in his life, and this revelation of divinity continues in Christ’s life.
The Word but lately could not speak, and lo,
It suddenly speaks wonders. When comes it
That all which was and all which should be writ
A shallow-seeming child should deeply know? (5-8)
The union of God and man in this child illustrates that the ‘immensity cloistered’ does
show through from time to time, and that Jesus ‘By miracles exceeding power of man’
shows himself to the world.
Building upon the foundation created in the previous four poems, Donne now
moves the Incarnation, and the paradox that it represents, to its purpose on earth, that of
the redemption of humanity. The fifth sonnet in the cycle is ‘Crucifying’. Here the death