Not long before his death in 1631, the Anglican poet and cleric John Donne (1572–1631) penned a series of what he called ‘Holy Sonnets’.
In the fourth of them he employed the metaphors of treason and theft to express his fear of facing the judgement of God:
Oh my black Soul now thou art summoned
By sicknesse, death’s herald, and champion;
Thou art like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done
Treason, and durst not turne to whence he is fled,
Or like a thiefe, which till death’s doome be read,
Wisheth himselfe delivered from prison;
But damn’d and hal’d to execution,
Wisheth that still he might be imprisoned.
