Seeing purple

✍ Scribed by Adrian Reuben

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 490 KB
• Volume: 43
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0270-9139
• DOI: 10.1002/hep.21244

✦ Synopsis

E

arly in the 17 th Century in the City of London two men pondered the same conundrum of life almost coincidentally, although their vantage points and personal circumstances could scarcely have been more disparate. John Donne, arguably the greatest love poet in the English language and later a respected theologian, preacher and Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral (despite his hedonic youth), mused on human frailty in one of his elegiac compositions on the death of 15-year old Elizabeth, the daughter of his patron Sir Robert Drury.