Holy Sonnets Information
A holy sonnet is much like a regular sonnet in that it is about love. However, though the standard sonnets are about sexual love or emotional love, the holy sonnet is about devoutional love towards God. John Donne was one of the first poets to adapt the sonnet in a way that would eventually displace love as the primary subject. Poets such as John Milton even eventually began to write sonnets on religious and even political themes. Donne is believed to have written his Holy Sonnets between 1608 and 1610 with focus on death and afterlife. Though Donne's Holy sonnets do follow closely to the Petrarchan sonnet, they do at times deviate from the conventional structure as in Holy Sonnet X.
Ryhme and Meter
John Donne's Holy Sonnets are all forms of the Petrarchan sonnet having the rhyme pattern of an octave running abbaabba and a sestet running cdecde or cdcdcd. This Holy sonnet is a slightly altered version that goes abbaabba with a sestet running cdcdee.
Death Be Not Proud
Death be not proud, though some have called thee,(a)
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,(b)
For, those, whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,(b)
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.(a)
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,(a)
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,(b)
And soonest our best men with thee do go,(b)
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.(a)
Thou artslave to fate, chance , kings, and desperate men,(c)
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,(d)
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,(d)
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?(c)
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,(e)
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.(e)
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April 2005