(1572–March 31, 1631), was one of England’s greatest poets. He was the chaplain to King James I, 1615, and dean of St. Paul’s, London. Educated at Oxford and Cambridge, his works have inspired many writers. With imagery being drawn from Scholastic philosophy and 17th-century scientific thought, his most famous works include: Songs and Sonnets; Holy Sonnets; and Sermons and Devotions. Ernest Hemingway’s novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940, was inspired by John Donne’s line in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, 1624, " … send not to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee."
John Donne wrote:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.157
John Donne wrote in his Holy Sonnets, No. 14:
Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.158
In his sermon before the Earl of Carlisle, delivered in the autumn of 1622, John Donne admonished:
What gnashing is not a comfort, what gnawing of the worm is not a tickling, what torment is not a marriage bed to this damnation, to be secluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God?159
On Christmas day, 1625, John Donne declared:
Now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.160
On December 12, 1626, at the funeral of Sir William Cokayne, John Donne proclaimed:
I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in and invite God and his angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.161