Areopagus Volume XLII

Seven short lessons every someday.

Welcome one and all to the forty second volume of the Areopagus. It was on this day, 392 years ago, that the great Metaphysical poet John Donne died at the age of fifty nine. It seems only appropriate to begin this week's instalment, then, with a few lines from his fertile mind:

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better than thy stroake; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

That's the tenth of Donne's Holy Sonnets,…