1621

In the south quire aisle is the effigy of John Donne, which miraculously survived the Great Fire of London intact. Donne, a former Dean of St Paul's, wrote passionate love poems, but in prose and poetry he also expressed with incomparable eloquence his passion for God. He is perhaps best remembered, though, for his meditation on the human condition, with its observation that 'No man is an island, entire of itself...never send to ask for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.'