G. M. Hopkins Heaven-haven

Concluding prayer

The sonnet is basically a Petrarchan one, with octave and sestet. The rhyming couplet at the end is more typical of a Shakespearean sonnet, however. It gives a clinching feel to the poem.

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  Do you think that Donne does clinch it at the end of This is my playes last scene?
  
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    Or does the sonnet still feel unresolved?
    
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  What words suggest urgency and fear?
  
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  What words suggest calm and faith?
  
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  Can you see the way in which the octave has a transition into the final part of the sonnet?
  

This is the Biblical Judgment Day, the Christian reckoning of the sins of all souls, both living and dead. This event is central to the vision of the end of the world, or Apocalypse, described in the Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament. Donne borrows images from Revelation but eventually decides, "You say I'm a sinner, I say I should be saved, let's call the whole thing off." Thus, Judgment Day is described in the first eight lines of the poem, before the speaker changes his mind in the last six.

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  Line 1: Donne is most likely alluding to a passage from Revelation 7 in the Bible: "After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree." But he updates the passage to reflect the modern knowledge that the earth is round. Why would he do that?
  
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  Line 2: When a poet talks to someone or something that can't respond, it's called apostrophe. Unless the speaker has a direct line to the Angelic community, that's what we've got here, as he orders the angels to blow their trumpets. Also, the image of angels with trumpets alludes to another Biblical passage, from Revelation 8: "And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets."
  
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  Lines 3-4: The lines also allude to the theological belief that the bodies and souls of dead people are reunited at the end of time.
  
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  Lines 5-6: More Biblical allusions. The "flood" is Noah's flood, or the flood in which Noah was spared. This story is told in the Book of Genesis. The "fire" refers to the fires that will consume those judged as wicked in the Apocalypse.
  
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  Line 12: The word "there" refers to the place of the Last Judgment.
  

Naturally, the collection of all deceased people in the world is going to include both good and bad folks. According to the Christian tradition, on Judgment Day, the good will be separated from the bad, which explains why the speaker wants everyone to wake up.

Then he tells God, essentially, "Wait, I didn't mean I wanted Judgment Day now. We've got to let those dead people sleep for a bit." Also, the speaker wants time to mourn for the dead and for his own sins. He worries that if he hasn't repented enough for his sins, he had better do his repenting on earth, before it's too late.

He asks God to teach him how to repent so he can be in the good category on Judgment Day. If God would only teach him repentance, the effect would be the same as if God had signed a pardon with his own blood. But here's the twist: according to Christian beliefs, God already signed this pardon (metaphorically speaking) when he sent Jesus to earth to shed his blood for humanity's sins.

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  The speaker orders the angels to blow their trumpets throughout all parts of the world.
  
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  Obviously, this is a bold – some might say "arrogant" – move. You can't just go ordering angels around to do your bidding whenever you want. You'd better have a darned good reason. Our speaker must think he has some major clout in Heaven.
  
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  The trumpets are supposed to wake up people – the speaker commands them to "arise, arise," but we don't know who these people are yet.
  
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  The most curious phrase in this entire poem is in the first line: "the round earth's imagined corners." Let's unpack it.
  
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  This isn't 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue and some people still thought the earth was flat.
  
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  We're in the early 17th century, and everybody knows the earth is round. So where would you "imagine" a flat earth? How about on a map?
  
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  To say that the earth has "corners" suggests that a person could theoretically reach the outermost part of the earth.
  
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  Donne wants those angels to be in the corners because, otherwise, how will everyone hear the trumpets. If you treat the earth as flat, then what's a poet going to do: put a trumpeter in Madagascar, one in Brazil, one in England, and so on? No, no, it's got to be a flat world, and the trumpeters have to go in the corners.
  
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  We have even more evidence for our map theory: some English maps from the Renaissance had illustrations of angels blowing trumpets in the four directions: North, South, East, and West.
  
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  In Biblical tradition, these angels even have names: Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and Uriel (source).
  
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  The poem seems to be alluding to two sections of the Biblical Book of Revelation. Here is the first sentence of Revelation 7: "After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree." And here is the second sentence of Revelation 8: "And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets."
  
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  Donne seems to be mixing these two passages together, and he gives the "four angels" the "trumpets of Doom" possessed by the "seven angels" (source).
  
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  Lots of numbers, yes. In the Book of Revelation, when the angels blow those trumpets, lots of nasty stuff happens: trees burn up, the sea turns to blood, meteors fall to earth, etc. It's the end of the world.