As autumn falls in the flashing splendor and fading light of a dying season, we are invited, with the inevitability of the seasons, to face an inevitable fact: We, too, must die. No matter how commonplace this truth, it is still brutal in its brevity. How one understands it, however, makes all the difference—and good poetry is a good start for understanding anything. And a haughty, triumphant poem it is, John Donne’s 1633 sonnet “Death, Be Not Proud,” to speak thus to Death:
