In the various poems that we have read for this week’s theme, I’m intrigued by the different amounts of agency that the narrators have. In Donne’s Holy Sonnet 19, the speaker appears to have absolutely no control on how religion is “ravishing” his heart/soul to poems; in contrast, Herbert’s narrator is the one that is invited and chooses to feast upon Love. Yet another different approach is in Herrick’s Prayer to Ben Johnson, in which Herrick explicitly creates a new “saint” and seemingly mocks “old religion” (lines 3-4), denying God’s agency and choosing to craft a new path for himself. I understand that these poems represent the wide range of Christianity practiced in the Renaissance, but I am curious to see what links there are between the authors’ stances on agency and their ‘ political/particular religious beliefs (i. e. Herrick’s stance as a Royalist? Donne’s Catholic upbringing?).