For Whom the Bell Tolls

While lying in bed due to a serious illness, the poet and pastor John Donne heard over and over again the funeral bells at his church, which would ring to announce the death of someone in the parish. Ill and away from his ministry, he was therefore unaware of the goings-on in his church and who had “shuffled off this mortal coil,” so to speak. With each ring of the bell, Donne wondered, “Who is it that has died?”

After some time, he finally answered himself, “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Why, we might ask? It is because “No man is an island,…