<p>Name______Date______Honors English 12 Block______John Donne: “Death Be Not Proud”</p><p>1. Using letters of the alphabet, work out the rhyme scheme in the lines to the right:</p><p>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. _____</p><p>2. What type of sonnet is “Death Be Not Proud”?______</p><p>3. What have some people called Death that might make him “proud”?</p><p>______</p><p>4. Lines 3-4 give the first reason Death has no right to be proud. What is it? ______</p><p>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 ______.</p><p>6. List all the events to which (and people to whom) death is a slave: ______</p><p>7. With what “unpleasant” conditions is death forced to live?______</p><p>______</p><p>8. What can make us sleep as well as death?______</p><p>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?______</p><p>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? ______</p><p>11. “Death Be Not Proud” is famous because of Donne’s unusual attitude toward Death. In one sentence, try to describe that attitude:</p><p>______</p><p>______.</p>