Death Be Not Proud - John Donne

Death, thou art Donne for

John Donne is a notable sixteenth-century poet whose works are most famous for their metaphysical topics, characterized by abstract reasoning and subtle arguments. His poem “Death be not proud”, originally known as “The Holy Sonnet 10”, is no exception, being a powerful work written about death, the inevitable endpoint in our enduring walk through life. Though the subject has been exploited in so many timeworn clichés of literature, Donne himself manages to cast an unparalleled, reveling look regarding the predestined annihilation of every human. While many people quiver at the very thought of dying, of quitting forever the exuberance and luminosity of life, the Jacobean poet here argues that death is in fact a pathetic creature, nothing formidable to be afraid of. It was Donne’s new, defiant, almost pitying take on death that sets his poem apart from others. In addition, Donne’s remarkable use of various figurative devices throughout his poem not only helps smoothly deliver the main points but also stands attested to the author’s poetic brilliance. The richness in figures of speech and the extraordinary theme work wondrously in tandem to make “Death be not proud” one of the most distinguished works ever written by John Donne.

The poem was composed in the fixed form of a sonnet, a fourteen-line verse form that proved widely popular during the author’s contemporary time. Such closed structure, while restricted in the number of lines and required of a certain pattern of rhyme, breeds further incentives for the poet to be prudent with word choices and figures of speech in order to best send his thoughts across, as John Donne has indeed done extremely well in this poem. The rhyme scheme in “Death be not proud” is as follow: abba, abba, cddc, ee. As such, the readers can divide the whole sonnet into four parts accordingly with the four rhyme clusters Donne has arranged, each corresponding to one of Donne’s main points concerning the...