John Donne, the seventeenth-century poet, was somewhat of a “renaissance man”. A Roman Catholic who later converted to the Anglican church, was also, among other things, a lawyer, diplomat, traveler and preacher. Such experience seemed to give him a very broad view of life and eternity. In his poem, Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness, he talks about preparing himself in this life, even on his deathbed, for the joyful tasks that await him in heaven.

Since I am coming to that holy room
Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall make thy music; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think now before.