Sonnet 10

Denotative analYsis:

The poem speacks about Death. The poet says to her that she must not be proud only because somebody is afraid by her. The poet says that she is not mighty and terrible. As a matter of fact, from poet's point of view, she helps people: she sleeps them. He says that the best men goes away with her quickly. He says that she is a relief for the bones, that she is a slave of destiny, kings and desperate men, that she lives with the poison, with the war  and with the sickness. The poet says that Death is as a poppy or an incantation, they sleep people too. So Death dies for ever, but people do not. As a matter of fact people sleep when they meet Deat, and then they wake up for eternity.

Structure:

The poem in a sonnet. The structure is that of the English sonnet. The main characteristic of the poem is the argumentation, typical of metaphysical poetry: there is a thesis, some arguments and a conclusion. The sonnet is organized into three quatrains and a final couplet. The first quatrain contains the thesis and the first argument. The next arguments are composed everyone of two lines. The conclusion coincides with the final couplet.

Connotative analysis:

The main theme is Death. In the poem, Death is written with the capital letter: it means that it is a personification. As a matter of fact the poet talks to Death as if she were a person. The adjectives "mighty" and "dreadful" which connote Death,  belong to the semantic area of war and it underlines the idea of devastation, but this idea is negated by the sentence "thou are not so". In lines 5 and 6 there is a sort of metonymy where sleep and rest are minor parts of Death and by a syllogism the poet understand that Death is pleasant. In lines 7 and 8 Donne speak to Death in an ironic way: she thinks to inflict pain but indeed she give rest to people. After that there is a list of the components that can cause deaths: fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, poison, war, sickness, poppy, charms. These word belong to different semantic areas: destiny (fate and chance), to kill (kings, desperate men), magic (poison, poppy, charms) and war. The final lines use the example of the Christian's promise of an eternal life to decry Death's role: "death shall be no more". The poet concludes the sonnet with an absurd statement: "Death, thou shalt die". Considering the idea of a place where death doesn't exist, the poet affirms that death will die because she will not exist. In metaphysical poetry to die is defined as to not exist.