Death, be not proud

"Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; / For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow/ Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me."

This poem was an interesting apostrophe to death, personifying death as the speaker addresses it. The speaker seemed confident, telling death that it cannot kill him. The way the speaker belittled death gave the impression that he was mocking death or bragging to death, saying that it is not mighty or dreadful. Death has always been perceived as this powerful force that steals lives from people, never to be avoided or overpowered. The speaker tells death that this is not so, and the poem is ironic because of this. Death is called "poor death," and that phrase is ironic because death is never thought of as weak or "poor." The speaker even calls death a slave "to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men." With those words, the speaker takes death's power by saying that others control dying. I got the impression that this poem has religious connotations because of the phrase "one short sleep passed, we wake eternally, / And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die." The eternal life refers to heaven, and the speaker says that death is only a short sleep. We will have eternal life in heaven because death has been defeated.