and addresses him directly. Herbert also personifies this entity, but he chooses to address it as Time in his poem, appropriately titled, Time. Both Donne and Herbert directly address this figure concerning its effect on humankind’s relationship with God and the afterlife, but they do so from two very different perspectives.In the first quatrain of his tenth Holy Sonnet, John Donne aggressively and directly addresses Death, his tone critical and belittling. He begins by saying, "Death, be not proud…for thou art not so;" (1-2) which openly challenges Death’s authority and power. He explains by saying, "those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow/ Die not, poor Death" (3-4) which openly criticizes Death’s only supposed power over mortals. In the second quatrain, he explains his lack of fear at Death, by claiming that if Death be like sleep, which is good, than shouldn’t Death be better still? When he says, "From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,/ Much pleasure,"(5-6) he means that rest and sleep are but images of Death and these things are pleasurable. If rest and sleep are images of Death and they are pleasurable, it follows that Death itself must be more pleasurable, as something in reality is more intense than a photo or picture of it. He explains this by saying "then from thee much more must flow," (6) showing that Death must be even more pleasurable than sleep or rest. When he continues, "And soonest our best men with thee do go,/ Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery," he explains that Death has an extra advantage over sleep, which is its ability to free or release our souls from this apparently imprisoning world. I say this because there is an implicit suggestion that life is a prison from which one may be freed or delivered; one cannot be freed if one is not first imprisoned or restrained. Continuing to use the idea of restraint versus release into the third quatrain, Donne s...
