Death Be Not Proud

“Death, Be Not Proud” is a sonnet by 17th-century English Metaphysical poet John Donne. It is the 10th sonnet in Donne’s 19 Divine Meditations, 12 of which were published in 1633, after his death. These poems are also known as the Holy Sonnets. The order in which they appear in modern editions is not necessarily the order that Donne intended. The exact date of composition of “Death, Be Not Proud” is unknown, although some scholars, following Helen Gardner, believe that it was likely written around 1609, along with five other sonnets about death and judgment. The poem is typical of Donne in that it features wit and clever word play to undermine and invalidate death and affirm the Christian truth of the resurrection of the dead.

Poet Biography

John Donne was born sometime between January and June 1572, in London. He was the third of six children born to John Donne, a merchant, and Elizabeth Donne, who came from a prominent Roman Catholic family. Donne’s father died when his son was four, and his mother married Richard Rainsford, a wealthy Catholic widower. In 1584, Donne matriculated from Hart Hall, Oxford, and later in the decade likely attended Cambridge University. By this time, he had begun writing poetry, and over the years his verse circulated in manuscript form.

In 1592, Donne was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in London to study law, and after receiving an inheritance from his father’s estate, he lived affluently during the mid-1590s, reading widely and traveling. In 1596, he joined the English naval expedition that captured Cadiz, Spain, and the following year sailed on another expedition against the Spanish in the Azores.

This was not, however, a good time to be a Catholic in England. Queen Elizabeth I was in the process of making the country entirely Protestant, and some avenues of career advancement were closed to Catholics. In 1592, Donne’s younger brother Henry was imprisoned for hiding a Jesuit priest in his lodgings in London, and he died of the plague while in prison. It is not therefore surprising that Donne converted from Catholicism to Anglicanism. This eased his path into a diplomatic career, and in 1597, he became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper of England. Four years later, however, Donne got himself into trouble when he secretly married 17-year-old Ann More, who was Lady Egerton’s niece. The family disapproved of the marriage, likely because Donne was of a lower social status and was not wealthy. He was dismissed from his job and briefly imprisoned, after which he and his wife lived in Pyrford, Surrey, where their first child was born in 1603. Over the next 14 years, until Ann’s death in childbirth in 1617, the couple would have 12 children; two were still-born, and three died before they were 10 years old.

In 1605, Donne and his family moved to Mitcham, near London, and later he also took lodgings in the Strand, London. His career in government was over, however, and he and his family lived in poverty for a number of years. He continued to write, and in 1610 published Pseudo-Martyr, an anti-Catholic prose work that gained him the favor of King James I, who had acceded to the throne in 1603. The 474-line An Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary, one of the few poems by Donne that were published during his lifetime, appeared in 1611. The poem exhibited a more somber, religious tone than the love poetry of Donne’s earlier years, and it showed the direction his future verse would take. In 1615 he was ordained a priest of the Church of England. He was appointed a royal chaplain, and in 1616 he preached at the court of James I. He soon developed a reputation for the brilliance of his sermons, and in 1621 he was appointed Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. During a serious illness, he wrote a prose work, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, which was published in 1624.

Donne died on March 31, 1631, after a long illness, likely stomach cancer. His poems were published posthumously in 1633; by 1669, a total of seven editions had been printed.

Poem Text

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.

Donne, John. “Death Be Not Proud.” 1633. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

In this sonnet, the speaker directly addresses death and belittles its power, saying that it will in the end be defeated. In the first line, the speaker admonishes death, telling it not to be proud of itself. This is in spite of the fact that some people are in awe of what they see as death’s power. Death is not as powerful as such people think, the speaker says in Line 2. In Lines 3-4, the speaker is defiant, telling death that even though it may think it has killed people, this is not the case. The speaker makes it more personal by adding that death cannot kill him, either. In the second quatrain (Lines 5-8), the speaker explains his reasoning. People enjoy resting and sleeping, and these states resemble death, so death itself will yield even more pleasure (Lines 5-6). In Line 7, the speaker states that the best men die young; their bodies are then able to rest and their souls are liberated (Line 8).

In the third quatrain, the speaker turns the tables on death. Instead of being a mighty force, it is itself subject to impersonal, unknowable, and unpredictable forces, as well as the actions of men. Also, death keeps undesirable company, being found for example during times of sickness or war. In Line 11, the speaker states that the opium poppy and other substances (perhaps herbs or other more esoteric preparations) can put a person to sleep just as well, and even better—the speaker may mean easier—than death can (Line 12). Using this argument, the speaker then directly asks death why it is getting puffed up with pride about its own power. The final couplet expresses the Christian belief that all believers will be raised from the dead when Christ returns. The speaker believes this will occur after just a short time. The resurrection will be to eternal life; death will no longer exist. As the final line affirms, death itself will die.