Hymn to God My God Summary & Analysis
by John Donne

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In "Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness," John Donne (1572-1631) explores the consolations of faith and the hope of a Christian afterlife. The poem's speaker, a preacher on his deathbed, reflects that the "straits" (or sufferings) he's going through now are also the "straits" (or narrow sea passages) that lead to a new world. Death, this poem argues, is simply the gateway to heaven—and Christians can take comfort from the idea that Christ himself had to pass through agony on the way to resurrection. Likely written sometimes in the 1620s, this passionate hymn was first printed after Donne's death in the 1635 edition of Poems by J.D.

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