Beautiful Writing, Part 5: John Donne

(lethttps://en.wikipedia.org)

John Donne was a poet, philosopher, and man of the church in Renaissance England. His writing covered a wide range of material, including poems, songs, and sermons. I want to quote from one of his most famous pieces: “Meditation 17”, which many readers will recognize as the epigram at the beginning of Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls:

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 friend’s 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.

This quotation is an expression of Humanism and the connection of all people. It is especially important in our current world.