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Summary

“The Canonization” argues for the superiority of love's unifying and reconciling potential over the divisive and antagonistic impulses of the ordinary world....

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The Canonization’ The Canonization’ by John Donne was first published in 1633 in Donne’s posthumous collection Songs and Sonnets. It is a five stanza poem that is separated into sets of nine lines.

For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love, Or chide my palsy, or my gout, My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout, With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve, Take you a course, get you a place, Observe his honor, or his grace, Or the king’s real, or his stampèd face Contemplate; what you will, approve, So you will let me love. In the first line of ‘The Canonization’, the speaker begins by telling an unknown, unnamed listener to be quiet. He expresses annoyance over the interaction he’s having with this person and states that the only thing he wants to do is love. Something the listener is doing is keeping him from being able to do. He goes on to gives them a number of options they should pursue rather than distracting him from his love. First, they could move on to making fun of the speaker’s “palsy” or involuntary tremors or his “gout.” An affliction was uncommon in contemporary society that makes one’s joints swell. Or, the listener might want to direct their attention to the speaker’s “gray hairs” or take some pleasure from making fun of his lost fortune. Other options the listener might pursue include bettering their own state of affairs. This might mean improving their mind with

art or making money of their own. Additionally, this person could get a “place,” or a job or take some kind of class. Another option that might appeal more to the listener is contemplating the face of the king, either in real life or “stampèd” such as on a coin. The speaker doesn’t care what this person does as long as he is left alone to love as he will.

Stanza Two Alas, alas, who’s injured by my love? What merchant’s ships have my sighs drowned? Who says my tears have overflowed his ground? When did my colds a forward spring remove? When did the heats which my veins fill Add one more to the plaguy bill? Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still Litigious men, which quarrels move, Though she and I do love. In the next stanza of ‘The Canonization’, the speaker begins with a rhetorical question regarding his own love and what it’s injuring. He knows the answer to be “nothing” but hopes the posing of the question will remind the listener and inform the reader that there is no reason he should be kept from loving. This first question is followed by four more. He poses possible, but unreal scenarios that his love was not involved in. The first of these is the drowning of merchant ships, the second the overflowing of land with water. It is clearly outrageous that “love” could ever cause such disasters as sunken

ships and flooded land. Just in case the listener still has misplaced ideas about the speaker’s love he gives two more examples. His relationship has not given anyone the plague nor the “cold” inflicted on his body by his love caused spring to recede early. The world is still turning as it always has. There are the soldiers fighting in battles and the lawyers still live for lawsuits. Everything is going on just as it is supposed to while “she” and the speaker “do love.”

Stanza Three Call us what you will, we are made such by love; Call her one, me another fly, We’re tapers too, and at our own cost die, And we in us find the eagle and the dove. The phœnix riddle hath more wit By us; we two being one, are it. So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit. We die and rise the same, and prove Mysterious by this love. In stanza three of ‘The Canonization’, he tells the listener that they can say anything they want about the love between the two but it does not bother him. The speaker is confident in who he is and how he is living because he is directed by love, it made the couple into who they are. He compares himself and his lover to “tapers” or candles. The burning of their flame causes their own demise, and he knows it.

No matter what the listener thinks of them, they compare themselves to a phoenix. They are not doves or eagles, but something grander and perhaps more magical. The “phoenix…has more wit,” meaning it makes more sense and applies more aptly to their situation. Together they are becoming one creature, “one neutral thing.” Just as the Phoenix is said to die and then be reborn, they are able to overcome all obstacles and return to one another. All because of the mysteries of love.

Stanza Four We can die by it, if not live by love, And if unfit for tombs and hearse Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; And if no piece of chronicle we prove, We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms; As well a well-wrought urn becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs, And by these hymns, all shall approve Us canonized for Love. If life proves to be too much of an obstacle for the couple they are willing to face death. They can “die by it” if they are unable to “live by love” They would rather die than survive in a world without one another. The speaker is setting out a world in which their lives are unfit for traditional remembrance, via a tomb or marker. Instead, they will be known through “verse” or song, just like this one.

In the next lines, he states that they might not make their way into a “chronicle,” likely a reference to a history book. That’s okay with him thought as they will end up in a sonnet. This is a much more appropriate place anyway as it will contain their “pretty rooms.” They do not fit the description of the great ones who end up in “well-wrought urn[s]” and in “half-acre tombs.” Their lives are not so grand. The sonnets they will end up in will allow them exposure to a larger audience. This way their story will be heard by many and perhaps finally accepted. The couple will become so popular they will be “canonized” or made into saints for “Love.” From then on out anyone who needs help in love will pray to them.

Stanza Five And thus invoke us: “You, whom reverend love Made one another’s hermitage; You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage; Who did the whole world’s soul contract, and drove Into the glasses of your eyes (So made such mirrors, and such spies, That they did all to you epitomize) Countries, towns, courts: beg from above A pattern of your love!” The fifth stanza of ‘The Canonization’ solidifies this future position of the lovers as saints of love. Donne’s seeker turns again to the listener and tells them that everyone will “invoke” the saints. When they do this, the audience will speak on the “hermitage” the lovers created. It will be a place of safety for any in love.

Now that the lovers, in this fantasy created by the speaker, are in heaven, they are able to look down on earth. They hear prayers for and from everyone. All is not as they would have it though. The love shared amongst the people of earth is incorrect. Their “pattern of…love” is not the ideal one. The love that once gave them pleasure on earth has turned into a “rage” in heaven. The couple is upset by the fact that everyone on earth seems unable to live up to their standard.

In this case, canonization refers to the process by which a holy figure becomes elevated by religious officials to the formal position of saint. It sounds like a great gig, we admit, but you do have to be dead (among other things) to qualify. You know what, though? The speaker of "The Canonization" is not going to let a little thing like death get in his way, not when he has the power of fantasy in his hands. The fourth and fifth stanzas construct an elaborate, metaphorical scenario by which the speaker and his lover a) die, b) become immortalized in poetry, c) are made saints by those who read these poems, and then d) receive prayers from the poor schlubs left back on Earth who aren't capable of loving anywhere near as well as they are. It's a pretty far-fetched idea, we have to admit. Donne is actually describing lovers who become saints not for doing good deeds or being especially pious, but for being good at loving each other. On one hand, this seems like a pretty smug and selfserving fantasy. Who likes to hear a couple brag about how great they are at being a couple? On the other hand, though, this is a pretty profound dig at organized religion. Think about it: most religions tend to talk about love as it relates to either a love of God or a conventional love between man and wife in a nuclear, baby-producing family. That's not what the speaker's describing in this poem, though. This is the kind of wild, romantic love where you seem to melt into the other person and lose yourself totally in the experience. It's not exactly the stuff of Sunday sermons. And yet, maybe it should be. At least, that's one way to read both this poem's title and its central conceit. Why can't romantic love be equally as redeeming for humanity as religious piety? Why shouldn't we be canonizing remarkable lovers, just as we canonize those who express their love for the fellow human beings in nonromantic ways? These provocative questions are at the heart of "The Canonization." Regardless of how you might answer them, there's no denying that Donne's poem is a celebration of romance, and a shot across the bow of religious convention.

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The word 'Canonization' means the act or process of changing an ordinary religious person into a saint in Catholic Christian religion. This title suggests that the poet and his beloved will become 'saints of love' in the future: and they will be regarded as saints of true love in the whole world in the future.

Why The Canonization is a metaphysical poem? Donne's "Canonization" is an example of metaphysical poetry. It uses conceits, allusions from the medieval philosophy of metaphysics, a dramatic situation and an impassioned monologue, a speech-like rhythm, and colloquial language, all of which make it a typical "metaphysical" poem. ...