Death sucks...

In reality, Death is a bully who thinks himself far more imposing than truth would affirm. He's Earl Sutton, the short, stocky ruffian from my days at Wilson Elementary School in Lynwood, California. Four feet of pure bluster.  

And yet, I'm frankly sick to death of death.  

As I've grown older, he's plucked from my life--if only for a time--more and more of those whom I love.

The classic poem Death Be Not Proud, penned by John Donne (1572-1631), offers what may be the most stinging indictment of death outside of scripture. Written from the perspective of a Christ follower and in the Modern English of his era, he admonished Death personified not to think too much of himself.

I offer Mr. Donne's poem, in his native English--and forgive, please, the intrusion of my notes italicized and indented--as a reminder of Death's hollow bluster:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,

Death is admonished not to believe his own press;

though he regards himself as a powerful tyrant,

yet he is--as one has written--"weak and irrelevant."

For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

Death--"poore death"--is dismissed out of hand,

as self-deceived and impotent.

(Read "Die not" in connection with the first line.) 

The poet courageously, tauntingly,   

rejects Death's power even over him, a formidable critic.

From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

Death, the writer chides, appears to be

but a picture, a metaphor, of "rest and sleepe."

How much more pleasant then, he reasons,

must be death's repose over, say, a nap.

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,

Death is not even his own man, so asserts the poet;

rather, he is but a slave of others; 

and he dwells in the company of the ignoble:

poison, war, sickness.

And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,

And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;

Back to the metaphor of sleep, and with a sarcastic turn,

the writer cautions Death not to be swelled with pride,

for Death is inferior even to other remedies--

from herbal teas to talismans to, dare I add, a sound machine-- 

as an inducement to rest.

One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

The author cites the crux of the Apostle Paul's

pronouncement upon death in 1 Corinthians 15:54-55;

he then concludes with an ironic twist and

a triumphant declaration that must be shouted,

and not merely intoned: Death, thou shalt die.