How would you explain or explicate John Donne's poem "A Hymn to God the Father"?

John Donne’s poem “A Hymn to God the Father” is typical of
his religious poetry in many ways. For instance, the speaker directly addresses God. In
addition, the speaker expresses a deep sense of his own sinfulness. Furthermore, the
speaker shows his recognition that his only hope for salvation is God’s grace, which can
only be attained as a gift freely given by God, not earned by the speaker. All of these
ideas and techniques also appear in Donne’s Holy
Sonnets.

In the first stanza, the speaker asks
God whether He will forgive the speaker’s very first sin – a sin the speaker claims as
his own even though it was committed by many people before him (1-2). These lines also
allude, of course, to the standard Christian concept of original sin – the sin committed
by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, a sin that tainted all their descendants. In the
next two lines, the speaker asks whether God will forgive the sins the speaker
continually commits, even though he continues to “deplore” them? When God has “done”
(that is finished) forgiving those sins, he still has “not done” (that is, not finished,
although the phrase also wittily suggests that God still does not have John Donne, the
sinner). After all, in line 6 the speaker admits that he still has “more” sins for God
to forgive.

In the second stanza, the pattern established
in stanza one is repeated. The speaker asks God if God will forgive the sin(s) the
speaker has committed that have led “Others to sin” (8), so that he has opened the door
for them to sin. In lines 9-10, the speaker asks whether God
will

. . .
forgive that sin which I did shun

A year or two but
wallowed in a score . . .

In
other words, will God forgive the sin the speaker rejected for a while even though he
had “wallowed in” that sin, like a pig in mud, for twenty years? Lines 11-12 repeat
exactly the phrasing found in lines 5-6, as if to suggest that the speaker has an almost
limitless number of sins for God to forgive.

In stanza
three, however, both the method and the tone of the poem significantly change. Here,
rather than asking questions, the speaker makes a declaration: he is guilty of the “sin
of fear” (13). In other words, he worries that when he reaches the point of death (when
he has spun” his last thread [13-14]) he will die, spiritually, before being forgiven of
all his transgressions.

In lines 15-16, the speaker begs
God to

Swear
by thy self, that at my death thy Son

Shall shine as he
shines now and heretofore . . .
(15-16)

Here Donne uses the
standard Christian pun on Son/sun, while the repetition of “shine”/“shines” in a single
line mimics the very kind of continued light the speaker
seeks.

If God is willing to swear that Christ will assist
the speaker in his hour of need, then God “hast done” (17): that is, he is finally
finished dealing with Donne’s sins, and He also has John Donne as well, since Donne now
“fear[s] no more” (18).