Derek Walcott and John Donne
John Donne's Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
The First Edition of Donne's Sermons
NUNC LENTO SONITU DICUNT, MORIERIS.
"Now this bell tolling softly for another,
says to me, Thou must die."
every man is a piece of the continent,
a 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 tolls for thee.
This is the poem to which Walcott alludes in his "Ruins of a Great House"
