John Donne's For Whom the Bell Tolls/No Man is an Island

John Donne
From Norton
Devotions upon Emergent Occassions
“Meditaion 17”
Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, morieris
Now this bell tolling softly for another, say to me, thou must die.

"Perchance he for whom this bell tools may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may thing myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me and see my state may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that: The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belong to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body where of I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as for a suit (in which piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled) which of the religious orders should ring to prayer first in the morning; and it was determined that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tools for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that the occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? But who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not an ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? But who can remove it from the bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself, everyman is a piece of the continent, and part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tools for the. Neither can we call this a begging of misery or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels as gold in a mine and be of no use to him; but his bell that tells me of his affliction digs out and applies that gold to me, if by this consideration of another’s danger I take mine own in contemplation and so secure myself by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security."