In the poem, Donne is describing the fact that death and resurrection are like the connection of the east and west on a map. The sun is used as a symbol of the speaker’s life – the rising in the east is birth and the setting in the west is his death. The elements of symbolism, rhyme scheme, and connection of the metaphysical conceit with a religious genre found within John Donne’s “Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness” all contribute in a strong way to the description and explanation of the metaphysical conceit found within the poem. In the fourth strophe, Donne two main elements of the poem: the metaphysical conceit of a map as the speaker’s body, and the religious genre in which the poem is written. The speaker seems to be at ease with dying, and describes it almost as a joyous event the rhyme scheme reflects how the speaker believes that he will enjoy the afterlife more than his current life. The map describes the speaker’s views of death as being connected with life, as opposed to being a separated and painful event. The map is used to represent the speaker’s body as he is on his death bed. The use of a map as a metaphysical conceit demonstrates in this poem as a metaphor to describe the speaker’s insight on death.

Strophes definition rhyme