Holy Sonnet 5:

Moving from Shakespeare's sometimes love-infatuated, sometimes homoerotic, and sometimes just plain cocky sonnets to these reverent, religious works almost made me want to change into a nicer shirt and improve my posture.

In Sonnet 5, Donne seems to plea with God to cleanse him, with a "holy fire" of sorts, so that he can be born again in a religious sense and see his sin-marred world in a new light. He wants to see "new spheres and new lands" that his sinner's eyes were unable to see before. He admits that sin has taken both parts of his world, and that both parts must die; referring to his physical body and his soul. He seems to be willing to give up his physical body to death when his time comes but also realizes that his soul should die also, deserving the burning fires of hell in retribution for his ghastly sins. He ends by pleading with God to burn him with cleansing fires of zeal, concluding a humble, well-written plea for salvation.

Another interpretation here is that Donne literally wants to bring on the Apoclaypse. Now sure, had the Apocalypse occurred during his writing of this poem, no one have known that he had been the one to request God's termination of the Earth. And thankfully, it seems as if God had ideas other than Donne's. In the first two lines he makes an illusion to the belief that the human form is a smaller version of the cosmos, afterwards saying both must die. Sure, humans will die, but for the Earth to "die," wouldn't Donne have to be referring to an Apocalypse? It seems as if he's genuinely abhorred with the state of affairs on Earth and just wants to see it washed away, mentioning that he could flood Earth with his tears of sorrow, making good use of the double-entendre with regard to the Biblical flood story. So basically, it trumpets started sounding and angels came down from Heaven and started burning stuff, he'd be the guy in the front row cheering them on.