The writings of John Donne appeal to me most strongly through my emotions. Although he was very strong intellectually he had a way of communicating that transcends reason, going straight to the heart. In this "Holy Sonnet" he opens his spiritual struggle to us, revealing the war in his soul. He carries us with him in this psalm-like prayer as he escalates the symbolic intensity, culminating in a last couplet as memorable as it is paradoxical.
Donne's most widely known passage is this meditation upon the sickness and/or the death of a neighbor. I resorted to it for inspiration and exhortation on the Friday following the attack on the World Trade Center. As I watched the memorial service being broadcast from the National Cathedral in Washington the tolling of the bells brought it into my heart.
From "Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions", Part XVII, Meditation.
The benediction from his sermon "Death's Duel" went like an arrow to my soul the first time I saw it. Because it came at the end of the last sermon he preached before his final sickness and death, it became the benediction of the message that was his very life. The admonitions contained in it may be graphic and repelling to the ears of some, but to me they invite the hearer to a spiritual reality that is beyond metaphor and simile, beyond intellect and emotion. John Donne invites us into the very Kingdom of God and not only that, he invites us to enter through the door: the Son of God, Jesus Christ crucified.