"Sonnet X", also known by its opening words as "Death Be Not Proud", is a fourteen-line poem, or sonnet, by English poet John Donne (1572–1631), one of the leading figures in the metaphysical poets group of seventeenth-century English literature.

Such power is merely an illusion, and the end Death thinks it brings to men and women is in fact a rest from world-weariness for its alleged "victims."

The poet criticizes Death as a slave to other forces: fate, chance, kings, and desperate men.

Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell, And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well, And better than thy stroake; why swell'st thou then?

[1] Donne had a major illness that brought him close to death during his eighth year as an Anglican minister.