"Holy Sonnet: Death be not proud"
author: John Donne
source date: 1633
language: en
availability: Published by Literature in Context under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

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)

[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.]

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 doth with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell.
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, death, thou shalt die.