Devotions upon Emergent Occasions is a 1624 prose work by the English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 writer John Donne

John Donne

John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...

, who dedicated it to the future King Charles I

Charles I of England

Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...

. It is a series of reflections that were written as Donne recovered from a serious illness, believed to be either typhus

Typhus

Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...

 or relapsing fever

Relapsing fever

Relapsing fever is an infection caused by certain bacteria in the genus Borrelia. It is a vector-borne disease that is transmitted through the bites of lice or soft-bodied ticks.-Louse-borne relapsing fever:...

. (Donne does not clearly identify the disease in his text.) He describes this as a "preternatural birth, in returning to life, from this sickness". The work consists of twenty-three parts ('devotions') describing each stage of the sickness. Each part is further divided into a Meditation, an Expostulation, and a Prayer.

Meditation XVII is perhaps the best-known part of the work. It forms part of Devotion XVII (subtitled "Now, this bell tolling for another, says to me, thou must die."), in which the patient prepares himself to die,and contains the following passage:
It is the origin of the phrase "No Man Is an Island

No Man Is an Island

No Man Is an Island can refer to:* A famous line from "Meditation XVII," by the English poet John Donne* A book by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton* No Man Is an Island , a 1953 episode of the Hallmark Hall of Fame about the life of John Donne.....

". The phrase "For whom the bell tolls" was later famously used as the title of a 1940 novel

For Whom the Bell Tolls

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to a republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As an expert in the use of explosives, he is assigned to blow up a...

 by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

 about the Spanish Civil War

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

. Hemingway's title in turn provided the title for a song by the heavy metal group Metallica

For Whom the Bell Tolls (Metallica song)

"For Whom the Bell Tolls" is a song by the American heavy metal band Metallica. It was released as the third and final single from their second album, Ride the Lightning....

.

External links

• Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
• Meditation XVII