Meditation 17

Donne introduces the sermon’s final conceit with the comparison of affliction to a treasure, and he frames the metaphor with a discussion on misery. He proceeds to consider a secular concern—desire for wealth and coveting others’ belongings—but incorporates this consideration into a metaphorical, spiritual narrative. Everyone desires wealth, but the greatest wealth is affliction. This conceit forms a powerful paradox. Lastly, affliction is priceless because it is a means to an end: eternal life in heaven.

Donne transitions into the value of hardship with the famous line, “And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee” (Line 14). In other words, Donne addresses his audience directly and says, “When you hear the death bell ringing, you should think of your own death.” This is, superficially, a negative idea until Donne further develops it in the following, curious discussion of misery—a discussion that opens as though Donne anticipates his audience’s resistance. One can imagine an outburst from the congregation: “What? Don’t we have enough problems of our own? You want us to be thinking about our own death, too?” Donne intuitively counters this response by saying, “Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors” (Line 15). This very human image is also an allusion to the 10th commandment of the Hebrew bible, admonishing against coveting one’s neighbor’s possessions. Donne highlights the paradox of his conceit when he says that taking a neighbor’s misery is “an excusable covetousness” (Line 16). Even with his metaphors’ intellectual loftiness, however, Donne keeps his message accessible to his audience by couching his argument in very ordinary terms.

Donne builds to the claim that “affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it” (Line 16). The paradox is that most people would avoid hardship at all costs and seek monetary wealth instead. This comparison of hardship to wealth develops through an anecdote: A wealthy man may travel to a foreign country with a vast amount of gold, but his wealth is useless if it is not exchanged into the local currency. This analogy adds vital qualification to the conceit: Affliction makes a person wealthy, but it doesn’t become valuable unless the person uses the affliction as an occasion for contemplating divine realities, thereby bringing themselves nearer to God. As is typical of a metaphysical poet, Donne employs an unusual analogy, comparing an intestinal ailment to gold in a mine. The analogy extends to another anecdote: “Another may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him” (Line 20). This narrative implies that this dying man is not mining the opportunity, not using this chance to reflect on his mortality and the judgment that awaits him beyond his death. This man’s present affliction, without contemplation, is as useless as unmined gold.

Ultimately, another bell will announce this man’s death. Donne makes his crowning point: “But this bell that tells me of his affliction, digs out, and applies that gold to me” (Line 20). This line incorporates many of the sermons’ devices. The bell symbol illustrates how, through a shared humanity with the dying man, Donne can inherit the spiritual wealth of the man’s affliction—but only “if by […] consideration of another’s danger, I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself […] to God” (Line 20). Within Donne’s metaphysical conceit, affliction is priceless if everyone uses their own and others’ suffering as an opportunity to reflect and draw closer to God, “our only security” (Line 20).