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Poem
Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness
  1. John Birtwhistle
  1. Correspondence to John Birtwhistle; birtwhistle{at}aol.com

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjspcare-2017-001371

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    By John Donne (1572 –1631)

    Comment by John Birtwhistle

    Since I am coming to that holy room

    Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,

    I shall be made thy music, as I come

    I tune the instrument here at the door

    And what I must do then, think here before.

    John Donne’s sonnet ‘Death be not proud’ is a favourite reading at our funerals; but his ‘Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness’ is one of the great poems in the language. According to his friend Izaac Walton it was written on Donne’s deathbed,1 though it more probably relates to his illness of 1623. Either …

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    Footnotes

    • Competing interests None.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.