Introduction
John Donne was a famous English poet. He was known for ‘affecting metaphysics’ in his poetry as stated by Dryden. Hence his poetry is called as Metaphysical poetry. He wrote both love and religious poems. ‘Death, be not proud’ is among 19 holy sonnets written by Donne. It was published first in 1633 in ‘Songs and sonnets’ posthumously.
Central Idea
The main idea of the poem is to belittle death. Donne personified death and teases it like a person. He compares its effect with rest and sleep and states that rest and sleep give more pleasure in comparison to death. He rejects death being ‘mighty and dreadful’. He even degraded it by showing it slave of ‘fate, chance, kings and desperate men’. He further devalues it by proving its residence in poison, wars etc. In this manner it is not fearful, neither pleasurable, nor independent and resides in detestable places and over that people will wake up eternally after dying too hence there is no permanent effect of it.
Themes
- Subsiding fear of death – Donne satires death to reduce its effect. He meant to say people should not fear of it as it is comparable to rest and sleep we do daily in life. Death is just a state of rest to bones and ‘soul’s delivery’. It’s not any ‘mighty or dreadful’ thing as some people say. There is nothing demonic about death. It even can’t make people sleep for eternity.
- Religious undertone- Poem is a holy sonnet which has its religious theme. Poet thinks death is just a medium which sends us into a ‘short sleep’ after which human will ‘wake eternally’ in front of God for the judgement day. Then death will not able to make anyone die and people will be free of birth and death cycle. It will be Death who shall die then.
Figure of speech
- Personification – The very first line of the ‘Death, be not proud’ has personified death. It continues in the whole poem.
- Apostrophe – In the first three lines of the poem after personifying death poet is addressing him but it is obvious it couldn’t have replied hence apostrophe is used.
- Assonance- ‘For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow’ has repetition of vowel sound /o/.
- Paradox – The last line has paradox when poet writes ‘Death, thou shalt die’.
- Metaphor – Death is shown a slave of ‘fate, chance, kings and desperate men’.
A Metaphysical Poem
The poem has most of the basic elements of a metaphysical poem such as usages of far-fetched conceits, metaphors, wit to justify such conceits and metaphors, ambiguous language and subject matter related to beyond physical world. It deals with relationship of body and soul in context of death. It also gives emphasis on immortality of soul after death. Poem has extended metaphors related to death. It is the wit of Donne to present afterlife as reawakening from short sleep. Hence poem is a classic example of being metaphysical.
Structure and Rhyme Scheme
Poem is a sonnet comprises 14 lines. It has Petrarchan structure i.e. divided into Octave and sestet. The very first eight lines have rhyme scheme ABBAABBA while next six lines have ‘CDDCEE’ as the rhyme scheme.
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