In “Death Be Not Proud”, explain the idea Donne conveys with the line “From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be.”

The speaker of this poem starts right away with a
challenge to the power that Death thinks it has.  He then goes on in each of three
quatrains to give a specific reason why Death should not be so full of pride and
arrogance.  In the second quatrain, he says, "From rest and sleep, which but thy
pictures be, / Much pleasure".  It is easier to consider what he is saying if we keep
reading the sentence.  Sleep as a kind of death, or death being just a kind of sleep is
a stock metaphor that has existed in the tradition of poetry forever, and Donne is
throwing that metaphor directly in Death's face.  He is saying, 'hey Death, you are
nothing but a kind of sleep -- and most people like to sleep.'  By suggesting that sleep
(and by comparison, death) is a pleasure, it takes the power of Death away.  He finishes
the second quatrain with further explaination of the pleasure that comes from death when
the soul is delivered from this earthly world, to an afterlife in
Heaven.