Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

The Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions were written by John Donne in 1623, during the three weeks he spent at the edge of death from a fever that had swept London. Donne — by then Dean of St. Paul's and the most famous preacher in England — gathered twenty-three short meditative cycles, each tied to a stage of his illness.

Each Devotion is in three parts: a Meditation, an Expostulation in which Donne argues with God, and a Prayer in which he submits. Meditation XVII — provoked by hearing a bell toll for a stranger — contains the most famous prose passages in English: No man is an island and never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

This edition includes the complete Devotions together with Death's Duel, the sermon Donne preached before the king six weeks before his own death.