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LINES 1 to 4 Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. Meaning- As with many of Donne's poems, "Death, be not proud" starts boldly. While a sonnet might often be used to address a lover, here death itself is personified and instantly introduced as the recipient of the poem. The reader is, essentially, eavesdropping on the speaker's address to death. The word itself is capitalized—"Death"—which makes the personification obviousby turning the word into a proper noun. The poem also begins with apostrophe, which makes it clear that "Death" is the intended listener. By personifying death, the speaker imbues it with the undesirable human characteristic of misplaced pride. Death has a self-inflated sense of importance and trades on its reputation as fearsome and final. The speaker acknowledges that some people view death in this way, but makes it clear that they shouldn't—and that the rest of the poem will prove why. Lines 2-4 expand on the opening proposition that Death is wrong to feel proud, and that it is neither mighty nor dreadful. Death thinks that it can "overthrow" life, which, as the fourth line clarifies, means "kill people." Here, Death is characterized as an aggressor. But the speaker states very clearly that this aggression is misplaced because, essentially, nobody ever actually dies. This is, of course, a paradoxical statement—the poem doesn't really intend to deny the existence of death. Instead, it takes the Christian belief in the eternal afterlife as proof that death is really nothing at all. Though the afterlife has not yet been mentioned, it informs the atmosphere of the quatrain's proposition. Again, this sets up the standpoint of the poem's argument and it is from here that the speaker must prove why this argument holds true. In line 3, the alliterative use of /th/ sounds creates a delicate quality that juxtaposes with the idea of death as a powerful, almighty figure. The enjambment from lines 3 to 4 suspends the sentence—the reader, and Death as the poem's addressee, need to get to line 4 to understand what happens to those that supposedly die. The "overthrow" is literally thrown into a short suspense, and then completely undercut by "Die not." The very reason, then, for death's existence is based on an untruth. Accordingly, the speaker again addresses Death directly using apostrophe, but this time adding the adjective "poor." Not only does the speaker not fear Death—he actively pities it. For the most part, the poem conforms to the Petrarchan sonnet rhyme scheme (with an important difference to come). Here, the rhyme scheme sets up "thee" from line 1 in opposition with "me" in line 4. This puts Death on one side of the argument—the wrong one—and the speaker on the other. By the end of line 4, the poem is still in the proposition stage of the argument. The bold statement has been made—that death cannot kill—and it is up to the rest of the poem to somehow demonstrate this to be true.