"Death's Duel" John Donne Meets His Match

t is a cold February morning, the first Friday of Lent, 1631. John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, delivers his absolutely last farewell sermon. He is old and has declared that he will die soon. His body is infirm; his mind is made up. It is time to pass on to another, finer world. The aging dean steps up to his lectern. He opens the book and looks out over the congregation. The king himself, Charles, the great King of England, Scotland and most of Ireland is in attendance. He has been told that the Dean of St. Paul's has agreed to deliver just one last sermon and even the king cannot resist attending this service.

The sermon is written out in full to expedite later publication. It is entitled "Death's Duel. "We have a winding sheet in our mother's womb, which grows with us from our conception, and wee come into the world, wound up in that winding sheet; for wee come to seek a grave ... This whole world is but an universall churchyard, but our common grave ...That which we call life is but Hebdomada mortium, a week of deaths, seven days, seven periods of our life spent in dying, a dying seven times over, and there is an end." To the quiet multitude, it seemed that Dean Donne was preaching his own funeral oration.

Two months earlier, he prepared his will in his own strong hand. He sought no legal assistance. His own legal training had not deserted him, and he wished to do nothing out of the ordinary in bestowing his last wishes and blessings upon his remaining family and friends. Isaac Walton, Donne's parishioner at St. Dunstan's in west London, noted for his brief biographies, wrote:

Dr. Donne sent for a Carver to make for him in wood the figure of an Vrn, giving him directions for the compass and height of it.; and to bring with it a board of the just height of his body. These being got: then without delay a choice Painter was got to be in a readiness to draw his Picture, which was taken as followeth. Several Charcole fires being first made in his Large Study, he brought with him into that place his winding-sheet in his hand, and, having put off all of his cloths, had this sheet put on him, and so tyed with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so placed as dead bodies are usually fitted to be shrowded and put into their Coffin, or grave. Upon this Vrn he thus stood with his eyes shut, and with so much of the sheet turned aside as might shew his lean, pale, and death-like face, which was purposely turned toward the East from whence he expected the second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus. In this posture he was drawn at his just height; and when the Picture was fully finished, he caused it to be set by his bed-side, where it continued, and became his hourly object till his death: and, was given to his dearest friend and Executor Doctor Henry King then chief Residentiary of St. Paul's, who caused him to be thus carved in one entire piece of white Marble, as it now stands in that Church.

There stands Donne for hours on end, naked beneath his winding sheet, shivering from the cold, so that the sculptor can catch the strong firm lines of his body at death's door. Donne, sick to extremis, persists standing nude in a drafty room so his dying image can be captured for all posterity. He is 59 years old, and in frail health.

His servant comes and goes, worried over his weakened condition. "My lord, you must rest or you shall surely kill yourself with the cold and the long posing." Donne looks down at him with scorn. Days later, when at last the complete job is done, and done right, John Donne then reluctantly lies down to die on his slab of stone. He cries out his parting words. "Death shall have its way." He has thought long and hard and, yes, these are the right words for this occasion. He is sure, and so he rests his head piously on his pillow of stone and awaits the coming of death. Then, he awaits death a while longer, and then, he waits some more. The afternoon has passed on into evening.

As an afterthought, he disposes his hands as he has seen so many dead man's hands positioned in his time in holy orders. He tells himself that he assumes this position so as not to inconvenience others who will come to collect his body. He takes deep breaths. He holds his breathe, increasing the lengths of time. The cold of the stone under his shoulder blades is hard. Soon it will irritate his joints.

A long time passes. Donne becomes aware that he is spending a great deal of his consciousness trying not to become aware that he is suppressing some deep anger. With great effort, he moves his mind away from this irritant and back to a properly pious attitude to receive death. He must be ready for the sanctified moment to arrive when the angels shall sweep his body up through the clouds and take him directly to heaven to his rightful place amongst the pious, but it seems that Donne is not done yet.

His servant comes in and says, "My lord, will you be taking breakfast then?" Donne tries to ignore him. An avalanche of guilt and anger engulf him. The entire night has passed but no angels have arrived, no trumpets have sounded, no death has arrived in any form to whisk him away from this too cruel life. He is exasperated beyond words. Death's ill-timing has put him out of sorts. Now they will have to change the death date on his stone.

A new sort of death's duel has emerged, more vicious and more cunning than any Donne has encountered in all his days as playboy, priest or penitent. He picks at his food. He discovers that he is tired of this interminable act of dying, and so he orders a second breakfast. His appetite is certainly not dead yet

The grand struggle is engaged. Death flirts and departs. Donne wishes to die most earnestly and then desires the sweetest parts of life to enjoy once again. This is indeed a terrible duel. He thinks back to his great poem on death, but what comfort is to be found in mere poetry at a time like this? The words float through his head like a taunt.

	Death, be not proud, though some have called thee  
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so:  
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,  
Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.  
From Rest and Sleep, which but thy picture be,  
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;  
And soonest our best men with thee do go –
Rest of their bones and soul's 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?  
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,  
And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!

Fifteen days elapse as Donne waits his much trumpeted death. He can't stand this idleness any more. He arises from his deathbed, stretches and takes a long walk. He avoids eye contact with his servants and refuses to meet with any of his friends who are flabbergasted at his miraculous recovery.

"How is such a thing possible?" they all ask each other. "What a sainted man, he must be," many say, "to have been spared death so long."

On March 15 he commends his soul to the care of his maker and lays down, again, on that same cold stone to die. More hours and then days and weeks pass along in their senseless way. Donne becomes restless. He arises again and calls in his friends and servants and tells them that if they have any business that requires his attention they had best do it now. "Death is soon at hand," he tells them. Having disposed of all that they could think up to ask him, he says, "There is nothing left but to die." He takes his slab again and sets his mind to the task, the odious duty, of dying.

It is March 20, 1631. He does not know it of course, but he has eleven more days to wait! The delay is insufferable. It is an outrage against ... Well, it is simply an outrage. What if he should live a year, two years more? It would be beyond bearing! What will remain of his reputation?

Here he is caught in some cosmic jest of heroic proportions. "Why me, Lord," he cries out, but the perfect will of God was such that he was unable to accommodate this pious and worthy soul in the mansion in the sky until March 31!

Imagine John Donne's state of mind when, more than a month after his final sermon announced his imminent demise, he arrived at the gates of heaven for a brief review of his readiness for heaven. Did Dean Donne arrive penitent, and humbled before the great God Almighty? Did Donne the sinner lament each stolen kiss and feigned gesture made in wooing and winning some pliant maiden? Was he, on bended knee, properly attired for an eternity among the angels? What did the all-knowing God think of such a sinner?

Perhaps John Donne was simply relieved to have finally died. All those hours and days, weeks and almost months, spent in disappointing anticipation, must have tested his faith. Was this the purgatory that he had preached of so often? This endless, tedious postscript. It must have occurred to Donne that he had better die, and soon, or all his pious efforts, the sermon, the statue, the long deliberate process, would very soon become the chewing cud of every gossipmonger in London.

In his last letter to his friend, Garrard, he says, "A man would almost be content to die ... to hear of so much sorrow, and so much good testimony from good men, as I, ... did upon the report of my death." He uses the past tense for some mysterious reason, as if looking back on the date of his demise with both regard and regret. Had his mind slipped its carefully controlled wedges so that the great hulk of it began to shift in its stations? Had the pressure of dying finally taken its toll? Or had the desire to die outlived the desire to live after all?

And to his old friend, Mrs. Cokayne, he wrote, "The hour of my death and the day of my burrial were related in the highest place in this Kingdom." There is a certain pride in this unusual announcement. "Would that I might die in the Pulpet; if not that, yet that I might take my death in the Pulpet, that is die the sooner by occasion of my former labours." Oh, that would be a death devoutly to be wished, but no, he has cast his death, and choreographed his death, and now he must stay with it to the end. They say that death is a hard thing, and rarely has a man had it harder than John Donne.

Gary Lehmann teaches short story writing and poetry at Writers & Books in Rochester, NY and has been the Writer in Residence at Roberts Wesleyan College. His poetry and short stories are widely published. He is the facilitator for the Rochester Institute of Technology's Athenaeum Poetry Group. See www.creekwalker.com for examples of their recent work.