To be frank, John Donne’s plea in “Batter my Heart” is enough to make the Marquis de Sade hot under the collar. The author is literally praying to be “imprisoned” and “ravish[ed]” by God. This reader finds that a sadomasochistic reading of Donne’s poem provides a strikingly accurate portrait of a submissive’s relationship to a Dom’ in BDSM culture.

Donne uses the pounding rhythm of a blacksmith at the forge to say that God must “break, blow [and] burn” him, so that he may be made anew. The violence contained within the author’s request, as well as in the force of his delivery, is contrasted by the profound love he expresses for the one who he wishes to “o’erthrow [him], ‘and bend [His almighty] force to break” him. The explicit message is that Donne, the submissive, condones and will benefit from any harm that befalls him.

Donne’s poem accurately describes a submissive’s attempt to negotiate an S&M “scene”(the term which members of the BDSM culture use when referring to one whole S&M scenario between consenting adults) with a potential partner. The proposed “scene” includes many common themes of consensual S&M play, such as servitude, enforced chastity of the submissive, punishment and bondage.

The analogy between Donne’s request and S&M “play” becomes unarguable when one takes into account the fact that a many S&M “scenes” involve no sex of any kind, but rather, are merely the joyous union one person who loves to be hurt and belittled with another person who loves to give the little masochists what they so desperately want.

John Donne’s Heavenly Father is just a leather daddy in the sky.