The Canonization Poem analysis

The Canonization

BY JOHN DONNE

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Canonization is  a poem by English poet John Donne

› It is viewed as exemplifying Donne’s wit and irony

› It consists of 5 stanzas comprising of 9 lines each, so there are 45 lines in the poem

› The poem’s title serves dual purposes: while the lover argues, his love will canonize him into the kind of sainthood, the poem itself functions as the canonization of the pair of lovers.

› The opening lines are “Hold your tongue and let me love.”

Title

› The Canonization refers to the process by

 which people are inducted to the canon of saints.

the poet says that if love affair is impossible in the world, it can become legendary through poetry and the poet and his beloved will  be like saints to the later generations.

Criticism

› New critic Cleanth Brooks used the poem to illustrate his argument for paradox as central to poetry in The Well Wrought Urn

› The Canonization figures prominently in critic Cleanth Brooks’ argument for paradox as integral to poetry, a central tenet to new criticism.

› For Brooks, “The Canonization” serves as a monument, a “well-wrought urn” to the lovers, just as the speaker describes his canonization through love

› The paradox is Donne’s inevitable instrument allowing him with “dignity and precision ” to express the idea that love may be all that is necessary for life. Without it, the matter of Donne’s poem unravels into facts.

Analysis

› The poem is addressed from one friend to another

› The speaker asks his addressee to be quiet and let  him love

›  if the friend cannot be quiet, the speaker asks the friend  to criticize him for his other shortcomings like his gout, his five grey hair, his ruined fortune

› The poet admonishes the addressee to look into his own mind and his wealth and to think of his position and copy the other nobles.

› The poet asks rhetorically “who’s injured by my love?” he says his sighs have not drowned ships

› His tears have not flooded lands, his colds have not chilled spring

› The heat of his veins has not added to the list of those killed by the plague

› Soldiers still find wars and lawyers still find litigious men, regardless of the emotions of the speaker and his lover

› The speaker tells his addressee  to “call us what you will” for it is love that makes them so

› He says that the addressee can “call her one, me another fly” and that they are also like candles which burn by feeding upon their own selves, “and at our own cost die”

› In each other, they  find the eagle and the dove and together (we two being one) illuminate the riddle of the phoenix for they “die and rise the same.” Though unlike the phoenix it is love that slays and resurrects them

› The poet says that they can die by love if they are not able to live by it and if their legends are not fit “for tombs and hearse” it will be fit for poetry.

› A Well wrought Urn does as much justice to a dead man’s ashes as does a gigantic tomb and by the same token, the poem about  the speaker and his lover will cause them to be canonized (ie admitted to the sainthood of love)

› All those who hear their story will invoke the lovers saying that countries towns and courts “Beg from above/ A pattern of your love.”

Form

› The five stanzas of the “Canonization” are metered in Iambic lines ranging from trimeter to pentameter, in each of the nine-line stanzas, the first, third, fourth, and seventh lines are in pentameter.

› Second, fifth, sixth and eighth are in tetrameter

›  rhyme scheme: ABBACCCDD

THEMES

› Canonization: the poet makes a point that the lovers should also be canonized for the way they love each other. They would be canonized in poetry and in the next generation

› Love: Donne advocates platonic love. He considers their love as the legendary love and pious which would later be invoked by the people. He says that love has been the hunting ground for the poet and their love has no place for the tomb, it would find its place in the verses

› Tombs: it has been the traditional practice to build tombs for pious people. Donne argues that love should also be thought to be fit for tombs

As a metaphysical poem

› Grierson says “Donne is metaphysical not only by virtue of his scholasticism but by his deep reflective interest in the experience of which his poetry is the expression, the new psychological curiosity with which he writes of love and religion.”

› On one hand, their love is self-contained and perfect, like a well wrought urn, on the other hand, the ashes in this urn are meant to be spread. This is symbolic of the tale of love spreading throughout the World

› The Canonization is in many ways a typical metaphysical poem where the complexity of substance is expressed with the simplicity of expression

Style

› Donne broke free of conventions and traditions. Conventional poetry lacked emotions, therefore it was artificial. John Donne on the other hand presented his own emotions. Every poem by Donne presents autobiography, yet it is universal in nature.

› Donne’s love poems are full of passion but at the same time, seeking for the permanence of true love. It is a profound contribution to the poetry of human love.

Images

› Donne translates their love to a higher plane. First, he compares himself and his beloved to the eagle and dove, a reference to the renaissance idea in which the eagle fills the sky  above the earth whereas the dove transcends the skies to reach heaven.

› He shifts his image to Phoenix another death by fire symbol, the phoenix is a bird that repeatedly burns in the fire and comes back to life out of the ashes. Suggesting that even though their flames of passion will consume them, the poet and his beloved will be reborn from the ashes of their love.