John Donne: Death Be Not Proud

Name______Date______Honors English 12 Block______John Donne: “Death Be Not Proud”

1. Using letters of the alphabet, work out the rhyme scheme in the lines to the right:

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. _____ From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, _____ Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow, _____ And soonest our best men with thee do go, _____ Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery. _____ Thou art 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; why swell’st thou then? _____ One short sleep past, we wake eternally, _____ And death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die. _____

2. What type of sonnet is “Death Be Not Proud”?______

3. What have some people called Death that might make him “proud”?

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4. Lines 3-4 give the first reason Death has no right to be proud. What is it? ______

5. Donne argues in lines 5-6 that since we get a lot of pleasure out of ______it follows we are going to get a lot of pleasure out of ______.

6. List all the events to which (and people to whom) death is a slave: ______

7. With what “unpleasant” conditions is death forced to live?______

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8. What can make us sleep as well as death?______

9. Personification means attributing human qualities to a non-human Name______Date______Honors English 12 Block______object or idea. What is personified in the poem?______

10. A paradox is a statement that contains a mystery or puzzle that seems to be either ironic or contradictory. What is the paradox in the poems concluding couplet? ______

11. “Death Be Not Proud” is famous because of Donne’s unusual attitude toward Death. In one sentence, try to describe that attitude:

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