Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions; Together with Death's Duel

About this book

In the winter of 1623 the poet John Donne, now Dean of St Paul's in London, fell dangerously ill, and as he lay in bed he wrote a series of twenty-three devotions, each made of a meditation, an expostulation and a prayer, following the stages of his sickness. In the seventeenth, hearing a church bell toll for a funeral, he writes the famous words: 'No man is an island, entire of itself... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.' The volume adds Death's Duel, the sermon he preached shortly before his death.

Context and significance

Donne (1572–1631), the greatest of the Metaphysical poets, published the Devotions in 1624, and their passage on the bell has been quoted ever since; Ernest Hemingway took from it the title of a novel. Hemingway's stories in Men Without Women are also in the library. For another great work of prayer, read The Imitation of Christ.

About the author