Text 37

John Donne

* * *

Death, be not proud, thought some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom you 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 souls' delivery.

Thou'rt 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?

Our short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.

John Milton

* * *

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones

The labor of an age in pilled stones?

Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid

Under a star-ypointing pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Has built thyself a livelong monument.

For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,

Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart

Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book

Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,

Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,

Dost make us marble with too mauch conceiving,

And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie

That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.