I loved the attitude of the speaker in this poem; it made me feel like he was talking in a way where he was trying to stick it to Death and let him know that he isn't that great or anything to be feared.
"Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die."
Although poems like these are hard for me to understand because of the old English, what I understood from the beginning when reading it over again was that the speaker is telling death he shouldn't be proud when people call him "Mighty and dreadful" because he really isn't and he holds no power over the speaker. He says that all that's ever mentioned about Death is pictures of rest and sleep, which to him is nothing more than a source of pleasure. The most powerful lines to me in the poem were "Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men" because, here, it's like the ultimate burn and he lets Death know that he's not even really in charge or gets to decide when one dies.
I believe the speaker of the poem has a very valid point about treating death as just a long, permanent sleep. I think the reason as to why that is is because, to me, it's not dying that I'm afraid of but how I die. So the idea of thinking about it as nothing more than an enjoyable rest is actually comforting.
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