Death Be Not Proud

As a poet, Donne enjoyed taking up an unusual position; he liked to examine his chosen topic in a way that no one had done before and state his views with a self-confident swagger that involved much intellectual word play. He also liked to begin a poem with a startling first line that grabbed the reader’s attention. While “Death, Be Not Proud” is not the most extreme example of the latter, Donne’s speaker makes it very clear that he considers himself to be someone with the authority to speak directly to the personified (and capitalized) figure of Death, whom he addresses throughout as “thou” and “thee.” (The direct address to a personified thing is known as an apostrophe.) The speaker is going to rebuke death and put it in its place. He will not be intimidated by death.

In the first two lines, the speaker offers some blunt instruction to his chosen adversary; death should not allow itself to be flattered by the fact that some people regard it as “mighty and dreadful” (Line 2), for such views do not express the truth. Death is neither of these things, as the speaker’s five monosyllables spell out forcefully: “for thou are not so” (Line 2).