John Donne’s speaker confronts his own death as the final act of a life now reduced to its slimmest measures: the last pace of a race, the final inch of a span. The voice is intimate and urgent, not distant. He pictures death as a glutton, instantly tearing body from soul. There’s a shudder of terror in that thought, but also a pause — “I shall sleep a space” — before his ever-waking part must see God’s face, a prospect that already makes him tremble. The mood tightens around a double letting-go. As the soul takes flight to its origin and the body sinks back to earth, he hopes his sins will fall away in the same motion, plummeting to hell where they belong. The poem closes not with despair but a clean, almost breathless plea: “Impute me righteous, thus purged of evil.” It’s a reckoning, half dread and half relief, spoken from the very edge.
Holy Sonnet VI: This Is My Play's Last Scene, Here Heavens Appoint — Summary
This is my play's last scene, here heavens appoint My pilgrimage's last mile; and my race Idly, yet quickly run, hath this last pace, My span's last inch, my minute's latest point, And gluttonous death, will instantly unjoint My body and soul, and I shall sleep a space; But my ever-waking part shall see that face, Whose fear already shakes my every joint: Then, as my soul, t' heaven her first seat, takes flight, And earth-born body in the earth shall dwell, So fall my sins that all may have their right (To where they're bred, and would press me) to hell. Impute me righteous, thus purged of evil, For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil.