Summary Of Death Be Not Proud By John Donne

This article in naijapoets.com.ng will be summarizing one of the famous poem of John Donne:- "Death, Be Not Proud"

From line 1-2, the poet confronted death and said: Death, even though some people believe you're fearful and mighty, don't be proud at all because you're not.

Line 3-4, the poet told death that those he thought to have killed didn't die neither had he had power over him. "For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow/ Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me"

Line 5-7, the poet reduced dying to a mere sleep and reclining longer in length, through it, humans rest their mortal bodies from the burdens on earth and tender their souls.

Line 9-10, death was called a slave or messenger that possessed poison, war, and epidemic. The poet made the readers understood that death is enslaved by destiny, coincidence, powerful and desperately wicked people. "Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men/ And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,"

Line 11-12, charms or sedatives can as well do wh

at death does (i.e. induce sleep) which is preferred to the wicked hands of death.

Line 13-14, "One short sleep past, we wake eternally/ And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die." These two last lines opined that dying is like a short sleep that leads human being to an eternal wake. 

"Death, thou shalt die" means that human being will die only once and death will become useless.

The tone of the poem is confrontational with uncommon sonnet structure that holds an end rhyme pattern of ABBAABBA. Donne made the poem sound like a letter addressed to Death; here, Death is highly personified. The themes of the poem are death and its handy works, death as an agent of mortality, the assumption of human immortality.

Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
(the Leo with wings flying)