{"id":17847,"date":"2025-01-17T16:02:28","date_gmt":"2025-01-17T15:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/?p=17847"},"modified":"2025-01-17T16:02:28","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T15:02:28","slug":"holy-sonnet-x-death-be-not-proud-john-donne-1609","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/2025\/01\/17\/holy-sonnet-x-death-be-not-proud-john-donne-1609\/","title":{"rendered":"Holy Sonnet X – Death, be not proud – John Donne (1609)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In this sonnet, Donne challenges the power of death, portraying it as weak and subordinate to fate, chance and human action. He reframes death as a peaceful “short sleep”, merely a transition between earthly life and eternal life, and mocks its supposed pride. With the paradoxical words “Death, thou shalt die”, Donne asserts that death is powerless and transitory, offering hope and defiance against mortality. Maggie O’Farrell quotes this poem in her memoir of all her near-death experiences<\/a>, saying that she recognises Death in this poem as the “arrogant, ineffectual, conceited despot” she has encountered several times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“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.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this sonnet, Donne challenges the power of death, portraying it as weak and subordinate to fate, chance and human action. He reframes death as a peaceful “short sleep”, merely a transition between earthly life and eternal life, and mocks its supposed pride. With the paradoxical words “Death, thou shalt die”, Donne asserts that death […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17853,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[56,92,98],"class_list":["post-17847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poems","tag-death","tag-hope","tag-life"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/roman-melnychuk-pFppRK-7j88-unsplash-scaled-e1737126172393.jpg?fit=1830%2C1840&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17847"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17854,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17847\/revisions\/17854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}