Can the dead see what is really going on inside us? Donne's sonnet starts with that question and ends somewhere more unsettling. If we can only be judged by what we show on the outside, how could anyone tell real repentance from a convincing act? The speaker begins hopeful. If the faithful dead are "glorified / As angels," then his father's soul may look straight into him and add to its happiness the sight of a son who "valiantly" strides over "hells wide mouth." The image is bold and almost physical, a man stepping across a pit, and the heavy monosyllables ("hells wide mouth o'erstride") slow the line to something like a swagger.
The swagger doesn't last. The second quatrain opens with "But if," and the confidence gives way to a problem of evidence. Perhaps the blessed do not read minds directly but only through "circumstances, and by signs that be / Apparent in us." Then the speaker's inner life has to be proved by outward behaviour, and the question hangs at the end of the octave: "How shall my mind's white truth by them be tried?" Two words stand out. "White" suggests purity and sincerity, and "tried" means tested, as in a courtroom or a metal being assayed. The rhyme ties it together. "Glorified," "o'erstride," "descried" and "tried" all share one sound, so the glory of the first line and the test of the last are locked together.
The sestet gives the reason for the worry. Outward signs can be counterfeited, and Donne offers three examples: weeping lovers, conjurers, and hypocrites. The "idolatrous lovers" mourn and weep, but their tears are for a mistress rather than for God. The "vile blasphemous conjurers" use "Jesus name," so even the holiest word can be turned into a tool. The "Pharisaical / Dissemblers" only "feigne devotion." Each figure shows one of the speaker's own marks of piety, tears, prayer, devotion, being used by someone insincere. If heaven goes only by appearances, his real repentance looks no different from theirs.
The language here is crowded and sharp. The adjectives are long and heavy ("idolatrous," "blasphemous," "Pharisaical"), and the sentences run across line endings, so the list tumbles forward. "Pharisaical" ends a line with the noun it describes, "Dissemblers," held back until the next, which adds to the sense of an accusing crowd. Then the momentum stops: "Then turn," with a pause right after it. The turn falls at the end of the line, and "turn" rhymes with "mourn." The poem's *volta* is therefore an action as well as a change of argument, as the speaker turns from the audience of heaven to God.
The form supports this. The octave follows the Petrarchan pattern (*abba abba*), which suits a problem posed and tightened. The sestet runs *cddc ee* and finishes on a rhyming couplet, a habit from English sonnets, so the poem borrows the closing click of one tradition to settle a worry raised in another. The couplet is also the plainest writing in the poem: "Thy true grief, for he put it in my breast." Nearly every word has one syllable. After all the learned vocabulary, the answer is simple. Only God can verify the grief, because he is its source. There is a small split in the pronouns too. The speaker addresses his own "pensive soul" as "thou," then speaks of "my breast," as though soul and self were two people comforting each other.
Part of the poem's significance is its method. A devotional poem could be all praise or all pleading, but Donne makes his out of argument, with its "if... but if... then" logic carried through to a conclusion. The doubt feels real because it is argued rather than just stated. The problem is also still recognisable. Anyone who has said "I'm sorry" and wondered whether it would be believed knows that sincerity is hard to prove from outside. Donne offers no way of proving it to other people. He finds relief in the thought that some truths about us are known only to God, and that is enough.