DEATH BE NOT PROUD (Holly Sonnet X) published in 1633

Rhyme scheme: ABBA ABBA CDCD EE : modello elisabettiano.

In the first quatrain, the very powerful and terrifying Death is transformed
into his opposite and shown helpless and miserable. The poet addresses
death by personifying it: he speaks to it as if it were a real human being. It
is just an illusion to believe that death overwhelms and destroys everything
and everyone.

In the second quatrain, the poet plays on the equivalence between sleep
and death. Death is only a portrait of sleep from which we derive great
pleasure, so we will have to expect even more from death when it comes.
The type of pleasure he alludes to refers to the rest of the body and the
liberation of the soul. Just men know this and willingly entrust themselves
to death and eternity.

In the final six verses the poet presents us with a paradoxical vision of
death: it is the slave of all the things that men fear as mortals. She is a
slave of Fate, of Chance, of the kings who impose her and of the desperate
who seek her in suicide, she is also a companion of poison, of war, and of
diseases. Finally, it is considered even less powerful than the opium of
magic filters.

The final couplet closes in an epigrammatic and paradoxical way: after a

short sleep we will watch forever and you, Death, will die.