Death Be Not Proud, by John Donne

72. Death be not proud, though some have called thee. John Donne. Metaphysical Lyrics & Poems of the 17th c.

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee, 5
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell, 10
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

Roberts, however, faces his death with no hope of an afterlife, believing that the time he has in this life is all he will have.

Hurry It Up, Please

Guest blogger Jim Hanas captures the wickedly funny tone of the late lamented Action in a biting comment on the mass production of writing:

[I]t still reminds me of a line from the doomed yet brilliant Fox series Action. At one point, a screenwriter who's been put through the wringer checks into the hospital for exhaustion. "Exhaustion?" scoffs soulless producer Peter Dragon. "You're just sitting there. Writing is the cure for exhaustion."

News to Me

I did not know until today that the Poetry Foundation is one of the world's largest literary foundations, thanks to a bequest of more than $100 million. I have been a subscriber to Poetry magazine for a bit more than a year now, and I received a letter from the president about the Foundation's plans with the latest issue.

Rememberance of Things Past

Beowulf is a poem that is doubly poignant. It is a poem of a lost people (Anglo-Saxons) in a lost language (Old English), about a doomed hero (Beowulf) of another lost people (the Geats). In that sense, the poem should appeal with double force to any Romantic.

The Warrior's Code


Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow, spoke:
"Wise sir, do not grieve. It is always better
to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning.
For every one of us, living in this world
means waiting for our end. Let whoever can
win glory before death. When a warrior is gone,
that will be his best and only bulwark."

Beowulf, ll. 1383-1389, trans. Seamus Heaney.

More Recent History

A. Dan. points out that the church in question below is actually far more recent than the Vikings, and in fact dates from about 1870, although many Icelandic churches are far older. The site nevertheless remains powerfully evocative.

Literary Monument



þingvallakirkja

þingvallakirkja, originally uploaded by A.Dan..

This is the baptismal font in þingvallakirkja, the church at þingvellir which is the place where the parliament was held in Iceland around the year 1000. The picture was taken on Good Friday 2004.

I was struck by this picture, which I found quite by accident, because it so neatly captures the moment when the Vikings embraced Christianity and acquired literacy — the moment when their most enduring monuments, the sagas, were recorded.

The Bear

I have finished reading my selection of Icelandic sagas, and in keeping with my excursion into medieval literature and folklore, I have started Seamus Heaney's .

Heaney makes a fascinating point in the introduction. As an Irishman, he had always felt some resistance to translating an Anglo-Saxon poem into modern English; he did not feel that it sat well with his Celtic heritage. Heaney describes his epiphany regarding the interconnectedness of language as follows:

The place on the language map where the Usk and the uisce and the whiskey coincided was definitely a place where the spirit might find a loophole, an escape route from what John Montague has called "the partitioned intellect," away into some unpartitioned linguistic country, a region where one's language would not be a simple badge of ethnicity or a matter of cultural preference or official imposition, but an entry into further language. And I eventually came upon one of these loopholes in Beowulf itself.

For me the excitement of Heaney's translation is not just his acclaimed verse, but the continued interweaving of the strands of Irish myth and Norse folklore that I have been reading. One of the remarkable features of the Icelandic sagas is the amount of interaction that the Icelanders had with the British Isles, where they raided, traded, and pledged fealty to various English (and Irish) kings. Here, now, is an English poem recounting, in part, the adventures of the Geats, from England, and the Danes. The inspiration for this literary detour, and the point to which I mean ultimately to return, is the poetry of William Butler Yeats, so it fitting that I continue the journey under the guidance of another Irish poet.

Viking Ways

I recently read Egil's Saga, one of the best known and most extensive of , and one that sets the tone for many of the other sagas in the collection I am reading. I almost took a class with Christina von Nolcken when I was at the University of Chicago, so I was quite interested to find that she had an online essay on Egil: Egil Skallagrimsson and the Viking Ideal. A slightly oversimplified view of the sagas is that when they were not raiding Denmark or the British Isles, the Vikings were generally either engaged in killing each other or suing each other for wrongful death. One of the most interesting literary features of the sagas is that major characters such as Egil are not only explorers, plantation owners, and warriors, but also poets. Egil's speeches at significant moments are spoken in verse, and it is clear that the Vikings esteemed poetry very highly.

On Deck

The New York Times > Books > Books of The Times | 'Resurrecting Empire': Those Who Ignore History Are Doomed to Hear About It

Rashid Khalidi is an angry man. He is angry at the Bush administration for ignoring experts on the history and politics of the Middle East. He is angry at the neoconservatives who filled the gap with their ignorance and "blind zealotry." He is angry at the decision to invade Iraq, and the grave consequences that resulted.

I met Rashid Khalidi briefly while I was a student at the University of Chicago. When I emerge from my current absorption in Norse sagas and Celtic mythology and turn my attention to the Arab World again, I intend to pick up a copy of his book.

The English Literary Tradition: Fart Jokes

MoorishGirl

One critic even calls it [Joyce's Ulysses] a 'giant fart joke,' which made me feel somewhat better for having never managed to finish the tome. I've always been slow in 'getting' fart jokes.

Then again, fart jokes have a distinguished history in English literature. Chaucer's best known tale, the Miller's tale, is a fart joke, and Mark Twain wrote at least one example of the genre.