John Donne is the first—some say the greatest—of several famous poets of the early seventeenth century who make up what scholars call the ‘Metaphysical School’ of poetry. This name suggests that Donne, the acknowledged leader of the school, followed by Richard Crashaw, Abraham Cowley, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan and others, applied to poetry themes relating to human sin and guilt, Christ’s atoning death on the cross, the brevity of mortal life, the joys of heaven, and so on. Donne’s poetry is particularly interesting in that it reflects a progression from an early preoccupation with sexual passion to the deeply spiritual insights of his later years.
Donne was born in London of wealthy parents, and was raised a Catholic (his mother was descended from the family of Thomas More). He started his career as a lawyer, but took holy orders in the Anglican Church in 1615 and became dean of St Paul’s Cathedral six years later (a statue of him in his shroud may be seen in St Paul’s today, on the south aisle). His poetry and sonnets abound with complex imagery, tending to express the spiritual in unusual, almost bizarre ‘conceits’ or analogies. Here in these excerpts are two famous examples:
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. At the round earth’s imagin’d corners, blow Your trumpets, Angells, and arise, arise From death, you numberlesse infinities Of soules, and to your scattred bodies goe.
However, Donne is perhaps best known for these lines from his prose work Devotions upon Emergent Occasions:
No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.