<p>"Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions" is a prose work by the English metaphysical poet and cleric in the Church of England John Donne. It covers death, rebirth and the Elizabethan concept of sickness as a visit from God, reflecting internal sinfulness. Donne wrote the Devotions as he recovered from a serious but unknown illness ? believed to be relapsing fever or typhus. Having come close to death, he described the illness he had suffered from a...