Page 68 - Writes of Passage

from DEVOTIONS UPON EMERGENT OCCASIONS
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 any manner 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 bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
John Donne
This is a scrap of a longer piece of writing about life and death by the English poet John Donne (1572 – 1631), written as Donne recovered from a serious illness in 1624. The spelling has been modernised a bit here, but the idea of our connectedness to each other – “No man is an island” – has not dated.
And Donne expresses the idea that when the funeral bell tolls – “never send to know for whom the bells tolls” – anyone’s death is your loss: “it tolls for thee”.
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