It’s not difficult to imagine the young Jack Donne, rake and author of A Defence Of Womens Inconstancy, That Gifts Of The Body Are Better Than Those Of The Minde, and A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning here. Not at all. In fact, were he alive today, I’m certain he would grace the covers of tabloid and celebrity magazines, and he’d rank high on the list of Google search terms. Today’s quotebook selection is from his later period though. Young Jack, who has taken part in the defense of the young Church of England had come to the attention of Thomas Morton, later bishop of Durham, who suggests that Donne take Holy Orders. By this time, the young rogue has matured to become John Donne, Dean of St. Paul’s. This piece comes from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, published in 1624, and was written while Donne was seriously ill with what some now believe was typhus. The work consists of twenty-three devotions, moving from detailed descriptions of the physical tribulations he suffers through, to the spiritual implications of what he evidently believes would be his death.

I give you the all time master of caesura, in his best known piece:

Meditation XVII

Perchance hee for whom this Bell tolls, may be so ill, as that he knowes not it tolls for him; And perchance I may thinke my selfe so much better than I am, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for mee, and I know not that. The Church is Catholicke, universall, so are all her Actions; All that she does, belongs to all. When she baptises a child, that action concerns mee; for that child is thereby connected to that Head which is my Head too, and engrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a Man, that action concerns me: All mankinde is of one Author, and is one volume; when on man dies, one Chapter is not torne out of the booke, but translated into a better language; and every Chapter must be so translated; God emploies several translators; some peeces are translated by age, some by sicknesse, some by warre, some by justice; but Gods hand is in every translation; and his hand shall binde up all our scattered leaves again, for that Librarie where every booke shall lie open to one another: As therefore the Bell that rings to a Sermon, calls not upon the Preacher onely, but upon the Congregation to come; so this Bell calls us all: but how much more mee, who am brought so near the doore by this sicknesse.  There was a contention as farre as a suite, (in which both pietie and dignite, religion, and estimation, were mingled) which of the religious Orders should ring to praiers first in the Morning; and it was determined that they should ring first that rose earliest.  If we understand aright the dignite of this Bell that tolls for our evening prayer, wee would be glad to make it ours, by rising early, in that application, that it might bee ours as wel as his whose indeed it is.  The Bell doth toll for him that thinkes it doth; and though it intermit againe, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, hee is united to God. Who casts not up his Eye to the Sunne when it rises? but who takes off his Eye from a Comet when that breakes out? Who bends not his eare to any bell, which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a peece of himselfe out of this world?  No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe, every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine own were; any manes death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.  Neither can we call this a begging of Miserie or a borrowing of Miserie, as though we were not miserable enough of our selves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the Miserie of our Neighbors.  Truly it were an excusable covetousnesse if wee did; for affliction is a treasure, and scare any man hath enough of it.  No man hath affliction enough that is not matured, and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction.  If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current Monies, his treasure will not defray him as he travells.  Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, Heaven, by it.  Another man may be sicke too, and sicke to death, and his affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a Mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out, and applies that gold to mee; if by this consideration of anothers danger, I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure my selfe, by making my recourse to my God, who is our onely securitie.

—Donne, John. The Complete Poetry & Selected Prose of John Donne. New York, New York: Random House, 1952.