"Holy Sonnet: Death be not proud"
By John Donne

Transcription, correction, editorial commentary, and markup by Students and Staff of the University of Virginia, Rachel Retica
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Sources

London : M. F. for John Marriot, 1633We have taken our text from the Text Creation Partnership's digitized version of the 1633 edition of Donne's poems: https://github.com/textcreationpartnership/A69225/blob/master/A69225.xml. Donne's poems circulated in manuscript during his life time, and were not issued in a print version until this edition, which came out after Donne's death in 1632. The long "s" of the original has been modernized, but we have otherwise kept the original spelling. The title page has been sourced from Princeton University Special Collections.

Editorial Statements

Research informing these annotations draws on publicly-accessible resources, with links provided where possible. Annotations have also included common knowledge, defined as information that can be found in multiple reliable sources. If you notice an error in these annotations, please contact lic.open.anthology@gmail.com.

Original spelling and capitalization is retained, though the long s has been silently modernized and ligatured forms are not encoded.

Hyphenation has not been retained, except where necessary for the sense of the word.

Page breaks have been retained. Catchwords, signatures, and running headers have not.

Materials have been transcribed from and checked against first editions, where possible. See the Sources section for more information.

Citation

Donne, John. "Holy Sonnet: Death be not proud". Poems, by J. D., With Elegies on the Authors Death, M. F. for John Marriot, 1633 , 200 . Literature in Context: An Open Anthology. http://anthologydev.lib.virginia.edu/work/Donne/donne-holysonnet-deathbenot. Accessed: 2024-11-21T12:25:38.827Z

Linked Data

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TEST Audio
[TP] POEMS,
By J. D[onne].
WITH
ELEGIES
ON THE AUTHOR'S
Death.

 LONDON.
 Printed by M. F. for [J]OHN MARRIOT,
and are to be sold at his shop in St Dunstans
Church-yard in Fleet-street. 1633. 6 (X)numbering numbering The first number comes from Helen Gardner's renumbering of the Sonnets in her 1952 edition of The Divine Poems, and the Roman numeral in parentheses retains the sequence given in editions printed from 1635 to 1669. - [RR]
1Death be not proud, though some have called thee 2Mighty and dreadfull, for thou art not soe, 3For those whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow, 4Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee; 5From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee, 6Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow, 7And soonest our best men with thee doe goe, 8Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie 9Thou art slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, 10And doth with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell. 11And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well, 12And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then? 13One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally, 14And death shall be no more, death, thou shalt die.

Footnotes

numbering_ The first number comes from Helen Gardner's renumbering of the Sonnets in her 1952 edition of The Divine Poems, and the Roman numeral in parentheses retains the sequence given in editions printed from 1635 to 1669.