Death be not proud

                                     Death be not proud

John Donne is equally known for his holly sonnets as his known for his love poem. His holy sonnets deal with serious theme and Issus related to human existence. The present sonnet of Donne deals with the theme of death. Generally every human beings afraid of death but the poet hear presents the picture of death in all to gather different way the attempt of the poem is to reduce fear of death and to convince the readers that death is a normal incident of life just like any other incident in life.

The sonnet opens with the poet’s address to the death that there is no need for death to be proud. Some people considered death powerful and dreadful but the poet considered in neither mighty nor dangerous. The poet challenges death saying that it can not kill him. Truly speaking those people do not die whom death thinks that it has killed. The poet believed that the picture of death is nothing but rest and sleep. If death provides rest and sleep, pleasure is to be derived out of it.

The poet opines that one need not be afraid of death because even the beast of people have sooner or later died. To poet death is nothing except rest to body and soul going to in new body. The poet considered death slave of fate, chance, kings and desperate men the mining is a person dies only when fate decides. Or chans decides is death. Sometimes a person dies only when king decides his death as a punishment, sometime death has to come when a men in distress invites death – suicide. The poet mention that there are three places where death lives in poison, war and sickness. In other words death comes to end individual because of such reasons. The poet does a comparison between sleep caused by death caused by charms of the mother, he believes that sleep caused by mothers charms his more enjoyable than the sleep caused by death because it’s comes like a sudden stroke there is no need for death to be proud, because death s just a small sleep and after that sleep a person gets a new form, new life, to live form a long time . the poet concludes this sonnet with a statement that death will be no more death it self will die.