Death be not proud

Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud

By John Donne

 

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. 

Analysis:

           John Done is equally known for his holy sonnets as he known for his love poem. His holly sonnet deal with serious theme and theme of death. Generally every human being is afraid of death, but the poet here presents the picture of death in altogether different way the attempt and to convince the reader that; death is a normal incident of life. Just like any other incident in life.

           The sonnet opens with the poet address to death that there is no need for death to be proud. Some people consider death powerful and dangerous but the poet consider it neither mighty saying that it cannot kill him. Truly specking those people do not die who death things that it has killed. The poet believes that picture of death is nothing but rest and sleep. If death provides rest and sleep, pleasure is to be derived out of it. 

     

         The poet opines that one need not be afraid of death because even the best of people have sooner or later died. To poet death is nothing except rest to body and soul is going to a new body. The poet Considers death slave of fate, chance, king and desperate man. The meaning of it is a person dies only when fate decides or chance decides. Some time a person dies only when king decides his death as a punishment, some time death has to come when a man in distress and invites death – suicide. The poet mentions that there are three places where death lives in poison, war and illness. In other words death comes to an individual because of such reasons the poet does a comparison between sleep caused by death and caused by charms of mother. He believes that sleep caused by mother’s charms is more enjoyable than the sleep caused by death because it comes like a sudden store stroke. There is no need for death to be proud because death is just a small sleep and after that sleep a person get’s new form, new life, to live for a long time. The poet concludes this no sonnet with a statement that death will be no more death itself will die.