by being a little world

O multiplied misery! we die, and cannot enjoy death, because wee die in this torment of sicknes; we are tormented with sicknes, & cannot stay till the torment come, but pre-apprehensions and presages, prophecy those torments, which induce that death before either come; and our dissolution is conceived in these first changes, quickned in the sicknes it selfe, and borne in death, which beares date from these first changes. Is this the honour which Man hath by being a little world, That he hath these earthquakes in him selfe, sodaine shakings; these lightnings, sodaine flashes; these thunders, sodaine noises; these Eclypses, sodaine offuscations, & darknings of his senses; these blazing stars, sodaine fiery exhalations; these rivers of blood, sodaine red waters? Is he a world to himselfe onely therefore, that he hath inough in himself, not only to destroy, and execute himselfe, but to presage that execution upon himselfe; to assist the sicknes, to antidate the sicknes, to make the sicknes the more irremediable, by sad apprehensions, and as if hee would make a fire the more vehement, by sprinkling water upon the coales, so to wrap a hote fever in cold Melancholy, least the fever alone shold not destroy fast enough, without this contribution, nor perfit the work (which is destruction) except we joynd an artificiall sicknes, of our own melancholy, to our natural, our unnaturall fever. O perplex'd discomposition, O ridling distemper, O miserable condition of Man.

John Donne, "Meditation I"