These poems speak, as [Philip] Yancey says, to “the guilt and fear and helpless faith that marked [Donne’s] darkest days.” They also answer one of the toughest questions we can face, “In the midst of plague times, how can we give thanks?”
Here are the three poems excerpted by Yancey, with his clarifying revisions of Donne’s eighteenth-century language…
#OTDLDN 1631 John Donne, metaphysical poet & Dean @StPaulsLondon, died. ‘No man is an Island, entire of itself’ pic.twitter.com/WEO57Grd3I
— London Town Tours (@TownTours) March 31, 2016