"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.
[2] "As Due By Many Titles" is characteristic for its "Calvinist influence in its reversal of the usually attempted move from fear to hope.
[14] Instead of developing "the problems of fallenness and estrangement" in the octave and allowing them to be resolved at the end, the poem "reverses this process and concludes by refuting what it initially seeks to affirm.
In the 1633 print edition of Donne’s poems, "As Due By Many Titles" was placed first, opening the main cycle of twelve sonnets.
"[20] However, as the typical sequence was reversed, the logical purpose of the octave "is destroyed" in the rest of the poem by the "unsatisfying paradoxes" of the closing couplet.
[21] The octave has a "relatively moderate, logical tone and feeling," whereas in the sestet the speaker is "more emotional," being "indignant at Satan but also at God.
"[24] By using the insistent repetition of pronouns of the first and second person (especially possessives), the speaker attempts to create a "permanent and inevitable bond" with God.
[25] However, he confronts these titles afterwards in the sestet with the fact that the devil "usurps" him (that is, "unjustly claims possessions" of the speaker),[26] expecting God to act for his individual sake.
This highlights a "highly formal relationship between [him], God and the devil, under a dominant legal metaphor, employing the ideas of landed property and usurpation.
"[29] The fact that Donne often violates the poetic form might be due to his "relative unawareness of the nature and importance of sound.
"[35] The speaker sets forth a variety of titles, which suggest that he tries to appeal to God through "conventional submission" (giving a "facile and general" catalogue of sins and debts).
"[46] The poem seems to end "not on a note of confidence even in the possibility of God’s gift of grace, but in sure knowledge of the perverse possessiveness of the Devil.
[51] "Whether the speaker is claiming salvation on the basis of an achieved condition or throwing himself on God’s mercy" is not certain, and the same tension may be also found in other Holy Sonnets.