Meditation

Meditation 17 is a very influential poem from John Donne. Many of his famous works are now considered to be ?metaphysical? these poems are works that were made to study the deeper nature of reality and make concrete image comparisons between the real world and theology and psychology. The poem Meditation 17 was written by Donne at a time of great stress and hardship because he was on his deathbed, this perspective helped him to focus on his true beliefs and communicate his point of view.

A meditation by definition is a poem that focuses on a physical object and then uses this object as a vehicle for considering larger issues. In Meditation 17 there is always a constant ringing of a bell. In the sixteen-hundreds when this poem was first written the ringing of the church bells meant that someone had died. When John Done hears the bells he wonders if they are for him, /The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute, that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. /The ringing of the bells also remind Donne to pray for forgiveness and salvation from his God / /As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but on the congregation to come; so this bell calls us all; (but more specifically to Donne himself) but how much more to me, brought so near the door (death) by this sickness. /

John Donne uses a lot of personification in his poems and in this poem he tries to personify religion like a person, fully capable of interaction; / The Catholic Church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she dose belongs to

Warren 1

all. / The reoccurring use of she proves that Done thinks of his faith with human like characteristics. Another devise that is used by Donne in the second and third stanzas is a conceit. In this extended simile humans are described as chapters in a great book