According to the Apple Dictionary, a conceit is defined as "a fanciful expression in writing or speech; an elaborate metaphor." A conceit develops a comparison which is exceedingly unlikely but is, nonetheless, intellectually imaginative. In Donne's poem, Meditation 17, Donne uses multiple conceits to show his ideas about death and faith and his other individual viewpoints. In the first paragraph of the Mediation 17, the most developed and clever conceit is about death. Donne is approaching death, and upon hearing a church bell signifying a funeral, he observes that every death diminishes a large piece of humanity. "No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." This elaborate metaphor is comparing