Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Death's Duel

Book excerpt: In addition to the writer's 1624 collection of meditations, debates with God, and prayers on the human condition-particularly earthly physical sickness and health-this volume contains the 1631 work "Death's Duel," a sermon said to be his own funeral oration, which he preached shortly before his own death. Readers of 17th-century literature, religious devotionals, and ponderers of human mortality are sure to find something profound in this fascinating, famous work. British metaphysical poet JOHN DONNE (1572-1631), renowned for his satires on English society, wrote this prose work in the latter part of his life, after he became an Anglican priest.