Welcome to the land of symbols, imagery, and wordplay. Before you travel any further, please know that there may be some thorny academic terminology ahead. Never fear, Shmoop is here. Check out our...
Petrarchan SonnetYou can thank Petrarch for all the sonnets you have to read in school. This 14th century Italian poet isn’t the first person to write sonnets, but he makes the form popular all a...
The speaker of this poem finds himself in something like a David and Goliath situation. You might remember David from the Bible: he’s the skinny kid from Israel who takes down the biggest, me...
We don’t call Donne a Metaphysical Poet for nothing. "Metaphysics" is the study of the reality beyond the physical, everyday world, and "Death, be not proud" is a good example. There are hard...
Many of Donne’s poems, and Metaphysical Poems in general, sound like someone tying a complicated knot. Like a bowline. Or, a half-hitch. Or, a sheep shank. OK, so the kind of knot isn’t...
This poem has no title. See another section.OK, OK, we should probably say something about the Holy Sonnets. "Death, be not proud" belongs to a sequence of poems known as the Holy Sonnets. In all,...
Wit"Wit" is hard to define. Jane Austen has it. Oscar Wilde has it. ESPN SportsCenter has it. And, John Donne has it in spades. We wouldn’t want to get in a verbal jousting match this guy: we...
(4) Base CampIt’s hard to keep track of all the different ways that he uses the word "death" in this poem. But, it’s clear that none of them make the hooded guy with a big sickle sound...
Donne was "obsessed with the idea of death," and even posed for a painting wearing the same kind of cloth (a shroud) used to cover dead bodies. Kind of makes sense in the light of this poem, no? (S...
GThere’s nothing like thoughts of death to kill your sex drive. This poem is like a cold shower.
