What are some similarities and differences in the ways John Donne and George Herbert treat religious experience in their poems?

John Donne and George Herbert are two of the greatest
religious poets in the English language. As might be expected, their religious poems
reveal a number of similarities, including the
following:

• Both poets often strongly emphasize
  an attitude of humility toward God.  Herbert stresses humility, for instance, in such a
  poem as “Love III,” while Donne highlights the same attitude in many of his
  Holy Sonnets. Donne, however, tends to be more extreme in stressing
  his speakers’ sense of unworthiness in facing God; often their humility seems somewhat
  abject.


• Both poets often use highly memorable and unusual
  imagery when discussing their relations with God.  A famous example of such imagery
  occurs in Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14 (“Batter my heart, three-personed God”), while an
  equally famous example from Herbert can be seen in such a poem as “The
  Collar.”


• As the title of “The Collar” suggests, Herbert
  often employs puns and other kinds of verbal ingenuity in his poems, and the same is
  true, of course, of Donne (as in the startling use of the word “ravish” in Holy Sonnet
  14). The writing of both poets is often witty, clever, and unconventional, and thus it
  is not surprising that both have been considered members of a “metaphysical” school of
  poetry.

However, the religious poems of Donne
and Herbert reveal various differences as well, including the
following:

• The tone of Donne’s poems tends to be
  darker, even somewhat desperate, when compared with the tone Herbert’s. In many of the
  Holy Sonnets, the speakers seem unsure about their salvation – about whether God will
  intervene to prevent them from suffering spiritual death.  A typical example appears in
  the opening lines of Holy Sonnet 1, which are addressed explicitly to
  God:

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Thou hast made me, and shall thy work
decay?

Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste . . .
.

Herbert’s poems, by
contrast, tend to express a strong sense of assurance about God’s love. Herbert’s
speakers often seem to trust that God will indeed intervene in their lives to redeem
them, and in fact such redemption is often explicitly described or presented in the
poems.  Thus, in the final line of the aptly titled “Redemption,” the speaker, who has
been seeking God in order to ask for mercy, suddenly finds him.  Before the speaker can
even say a word, however, Christ immediately says, “‘Your suit is granted’” (14). Here
as so often elsewhere, Herbert implies that God loves us, knows our needs, and provides
for those needs before we can even request his
help.

• To make a broad and obviously simplistic
  generalization, God inspires fear and uncertainty in many of Donne’s speakers, but he
  inspires confidence and reassurance in many of Herbert’s speakers. Donne’s speakers are
  often presented as appealing for salvation in highly emotional terms (as in many of the
  Holy Sonnets); Herbert’s speakers are often presented as surprised and overwhelmed by
  God’s grace and graciousness, as at the very end of “The Collar” and also at the very
  end of “Love III.”


• The tone of Herbert’s religious poems
  is often lighter, more joyous, more celebratory than the tone of Donne’s.  Herbert’s
  speakers see evidence of God’s presence practically everywhere in the world.  Donne’s
  speakers, on the other hand, tend to imagine a more distant God whose presence and
  intervention cannot at all be taken for
  granted.