Donne, John

Cultural  

1. A seventeenth-century English poet and clergyman. Donne is famous for his intricate metaphors, as in a poem in which he compares two lovers to the two legs of a drawing compass. He also wrote learned and eloquent sermons and meditations. The expressions “Death, be not proud,” “No man is an island,” and “for whom the bell tolls” are drawn from Donne's works.

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Example Sentences

Donne, John, a celebrated poet and dean of St. Paul's, was the son of a merchant of London, in which city he was born in 1573.

From Project Gutenberg

Winston Churchill's "blood, toil, tears and sweat" was inspired by John Donne; John Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you" echoed Oliver Wendell Holmes; and Ronald Reagan's 1980 debate cry, "I am paying for this microphone," was apparently lifted from a 1948 movie, State of the Union.

From Time Magazine Archive

Temporarily, the dilemma, of Poet Donne, his publishers and readers resembled the one he once scratched on the wall of his Fleet Street Prison cell:�Anne Donne, John Donne, Undone.

From Time Magazine Archive

Crimean War, the, 160, 202, 238 Danilevsky, 180 Daudet, 172 “Decembrist” rising, the, 44, 45, 61, 92 Delvig, Baron, 101 Demetrius, 21, 67 Derzhavin, 29, 56 Diderot, 27 Dobrolyubov, 180, 181, 227 Donne, John, 97 Dostoyevsky, 96, 99, 109, 143, 145, 160, 161, 164, 167, 173, 180, 192, 196 f.,

From Project Gutenberg

Doddridge, Sir John, 144 Domestic Correspondence refers to R.'s ships, 42 Donne, John, earliest known poem, 105 Dover, R. at, 90, 193 Drake, Sir Francis, receives prisoners from Armada, 39; expedition to Portugal, 41-42; and spoil of 'Madre de Dios,' 62; his fate, 6, 87 'Dreadnought,' Sir C. Clifford's Cadiz ship, 95 Dudley, Robert, D. of Northumberland, at Cadiz, ib.

From Project Gutenberg