John Donne
1572–1631 · England
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
The lineage through John Donne
Drew From(4)
who shaped John Donne
- One of these poems is Lamentations — "The Lamentations of Jeremy," Donne's near-line-by-line verse translation of the whole book (after Tremellius's Latin)
- The lament Jeremiah pours over a ruined Jerusalem is the same register Donne turns inward in the Holy Sonnets — penitence, abandonment, a cry for mercy
- Read Lamentations first and Donne's translation stops being a curiosity in the collection and becomes the key to his devotional grief
- "Death, be not proud" is Paul set to a sonnet's clock
- Donne ends it by collapsing 1 Corinthians 15:26 — death as the last enemy to be destroyed — into "Death, thou shalt die"
- "At the round earth's imagined corners" sounds the same trumpet from 15:51-52, the dead raised at the last; read the chapter first and Donne's bravado reads as scripture, not bluster
- Donne's Holy Sonnets borrow the Psalms' penitential voice — the cry of a soul bargaining, pleading, accusing God to His face
- He lived inside these texts: five Psalms a day as Dean of St Paul's, sermons built on them, his stanza forms following the metrical-Psalm tradition
- He even praised the Sidney–Pembroke verse Psalter in a poem of his own, calling its authors 'David's Successors' — the lineage was something he claimed
via Canzoniere
- Donne writes against Petrarch from inside Petrarch — The Sun Rising takes the Canzoniere's reverent sun-address and makes it irreverent, the same hyperbole aimed the opposite way
- The specific conceits are inherited: the seas of tears and gales of sighs reworked into A Valediction: of Weeping, the amorous dream regenerated, the Holy Sonnets cut to Petrarch's octave-and-sestet form
- Read the Canzoniere first and Donne stops looking like a rebel without a tradition — you see exactly what he's wrenching out of shape
Inspired(1)
who John Donne shaped
- Donne was Herbert's godfather — and delivered the funeral sermon for Herbert's mother
- More than family: Donne's metaphysical style — the speech-rhythm, the plain direct diction, the conceit that grabs you by the collar — is all over The Temple
- Herbert took Donne's restless, argumentative manner and turned it toward God
Portraits
Posthumous likeness produced around the time of Donne's 1631 death; a secondary, lower-resolution alternate to the painted portraits.
1631
Head-and-shoulders portrait of Donne in clerical black, short beard, looking calmly at the viewer.
Isaac Oliver, 1616
Donne stands wrapped in a winding-sheet knotted at head and feet, eyes closed, posed as if already a corpse.
Martin Droeshout, 1633
Famous Quotes
“Death, be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.”
“One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.”
“Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.”
“Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is.”
About John Donne
English poet and cleric, the leading figure of the metaphysical poets. His poetry ranges from erotic love lyrics to profound religious meditations, unified by intellectual wit, dramatic voice, and bold conceits. He later became Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, and his sermons rank among the greatest prose of the period.