15 John Donne Quotes on Death

John Donne quotes on death

3. My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest, Where can we find two better hemispheres Without sharp North, without declining West? What ever dies, was not mixed equally; If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

18. Sweetest love, I do not go, For weariness of thee, Nor in hope the world can show A fitter love for me; But since that I Must die at last, 'tis best, To use my self in jest Thus by feigned deaths to die.

20. But think that we Are but turned aside to sleep.

28. For I am every dead thing, In whom love wrought new alchemy. For his art did express A quintessence even from nothingness, From dull privations, and lean emptiness He ruined me, and I am re-begot Of absence, darkness, death; things which are not.

38. Who ever comes to shroud me, do not harm Nor question much That subtle wreth of hair, which crowns my arm; The mystery, the sign you must not touch, For 'tis my outward soul, Viceroy to that, which then to heaven being gone, Will leave this to control, And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolution.

41. So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss, Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away.

46. Since I am coming to that holy room, Where, with thy choir of saints forevermore, I shall be made thy music; as I come I tune the instrument here at the door, And what I must do then, think here before.

48. When my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me, when the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction if the poorest alive tread upon him, nor the poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to princes, for they shall be equal but in dust.

63. All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, Despair, law, chance, hath slain.

65. Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so, For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow, Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

66. Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell; And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke.

67. One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

68. What if this present were the world's last night?

79. No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine own were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

83. And what is so intricate, so entangling as death? Who ever got out of a winding sheet?