Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow.

Edward Young (1683–1765), an English poet and Anglican clergyman, is best known for his long devotional poem *The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, & Immortality* (commonly *Night Thoughts*). The work, published in the 1740s, is a meditation on mortality, grief, and the vanity of worldly ambition, written in the wake of personal bereavements and in a culture preoccupied with death and moral reflection. The line “Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow” belongs to Young’s recurring theme that death strikes without regard to human distinction, and that prominence can make one seem especially “marked” for sudden loss.

Young personifies Death as a hunter or marksman who prefers conspicuous targets: the “shining mark” suggests those who stand out—by rank, beauty, talent, or success—while “a signal blow” implies a dramatic, exemplary strike. The thought is both psychological and moral: we notice and remember the fall of the eminent more than the obscure, and we are tempted to read such falls as warnings. In *Night Thoughts*, this serves Young’s larger argument that worldly splendor is precarious and that human beings should measure life by spiritual rather than social or material “shine.”