Death Be Not Proud


"Sonnet X", also known by its opening words as "Death Be Not Proud", is a fourteen-line poem, or sonnet, by English poet John Donne, one of the leading figures in the metaphysical poets group of seventeenth-century English literature. Written between February and August 1609, it was first published posthumously in 1633.
The poem is included as one of the nineteen sonnets that comprise Donne's Holy Sonnets or Divine Meditations, among his best-known works. Most editions number the poem as the tenth in the sonnet sequence, which follows the order of poems in the Westmoreland Manuscript, the most complete arrangement of the cycle, discovered in the late nineteenth century. However, two editions published shortly after Donne's death include the sonnets in a different order, where this poem appears as eleventh in the Songs and Sonnets and sixth in Divine Meditations.
"Death Be Not Proud" presents an argument against the power of death. Addressing Death as a person, the speaker warns Death against pride in his power. Such power is merely an illusion, and the end Death thinks it brings to men and women is in fact a rest from world-weariness for its alleged "victims." The poet criticizes Death as a slave to other forces: fate, chance, kings, and desperate men. Death is not in control, for a variety of other powers exercise their volition in taking lives. Even in the rest it brings, Death is inferior to drugs. Finally, the speaker predicts the end of Death itself, stating, "Death, thou shalt die."

Poem

Donne had a major illness that brought him close to death during his eighth year as an Anglican minister. The illness may have been typhoid fever, but in recent years it has been shown that he may have had a relapsing fever in combination with other illnesses.
The sonnet has an ABBA ABBA CDDC EE rhyme scheme.
The last line alludes to 1 Corinthians 15:26: "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death".
The poem's opening words are echoed in a contemporary poem, "Death be not proud, thy hand gave not this blow", sometimes attributed to Donne, but more likely by his patron Lucy Harington Russell, Countess of Bedford.

Influence on other works

Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther, is a memoir of his son's struggle with — and ultimately death from — a brain tumor. In the Pulitzer Prize–winning play Wit by Margaret Edson, the sonnet plays a central role.
The first two lines of the poem are read aloud at the beginning of the opening title track of Follow the Reaper by Finnish metal band Children of Bodom.