Death Be Not Proud
John Donne
Read by LibriVox Volunteers
This week we’re marking the American Memorial Day with eleven readings of a John Donne poem. Memorial Day was conceived as a time to remember military men and women who had lost their lives in war. Kings and presidents come and go and some of the reasons that wars have come about are now lost from memory or are obscured in our history texts.
A consistent aspect of war is that those who fight them are not those who arrange them. The soldiers and sailors who suffer loss of limb, scarred minds or forfeit their lives mostly come from the lower and middle rungs of our societal ladder. They are our sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters.
Once gone, it is the family who notices the empty chair at the family table while society at large knows not their name. Death has captured them and taken them forever from our midst. It has become personal and not a vague philosophical idea. The theme of Donne’s poem is that, though Death is irresistible, it has no cause to be proud. The human spirit and its hope for redemption is indomitable. This was the weekly poetry project for the week of May 27th, 2006.
(Summary by Robert Garrison) (0 hr 16 min)
Chapters
Chapter 01 | 1:33 | Read by Andrew Miller |
Chapter 02 | 1:32 | Read by Annie Coleman Rothenberg |
Chapter 03 | 1:25 | Read by Dreama Lynn |
Chapter 04 | 1:49 | Read by Graham Williams |
Chapter 05 | 1:10 | Read by Kristin Hughes (1974-2021) |
Chapter 06 | 1:14 | Read by Kymm Zuckert |
Chapter 07 | 1:36 | Read by Fox in the Stars |
Chapter 08 | 1:00 | Read by Martin Clifton |
Chapter 09 | 1:34 | Read by Peter Yearsley |
Chapter 10 | 1:42 | Read by Robert Garrison |
Chapter 11 | 1:24 | Read by Tina Tilney |
Reviews
I love this poem
librivoxvolunteer
The versions that I liked were peter's, tina's, kristin's. the others were not so good, however it is much appreciated to see so many people with an interest for this beautiful sonnet