Dear Class V:
My favorite is John Donne’s Meditation #17, “No Man Is an Island.”
The poem is especially meaningful because to live is to learn the truth that no man is an island — and that we must respect others as we would ourselves want to be respected.
MEDITATION #17
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
—John Donne