5TH STANZA

In this stanza poet thinks about the future and feels pacified that people one would invoke them, he writes
the last few verses as a prayer, the lover in the coming ages would invoke them and say that o you whose
reverend love made tem each others hermitage, and who considered the love as peace but now people
consider it as rage, thus will demand their pattern of love from them -'You who did contract into
yourselves the soul of the whole world and throw it on the mirror of your eyes, making them such
mirrors, that they gave you everything in epitomy, countries, towns and courts, we your worshipers pray
you to petition heaven for us to give us a pattern, that is, a copying of your love.' The poet asks to
consider their love as an idealized pattern and implores with God to grant them something similar.
Prof.Grierson suggests that now they have been canonized: now they are saints.

The final stanza voices the poet’s sense of future vindication over the critic. The poet expects that the rest
of the world will “invoke” himself and his beloved, similar to the way Catholics invoke saints in their
prayers. In this vision of the future, the lovers’ legend has grown, and they have reached a kind of
sainthood. They are role models for all the world, because “Countries, towns, courts beg from above/A
pattern of your love” (lines 44-45). From the lovers’ perspective, the whole world is present as they look
into each other’s eyes; this sets the pattern of love that the world can follow.

COMMENTARY

This complicated poem, spoken ostensibly to someone who disapproves of the speaker’s love affair, is
written in the voice of a world-wise, sardonic courtier who is nevertheless utterly caught up in his love.
The poem simultaneously parodies old notions of love and coins elaborate new ones, eventually
concluding that even if the love affair is impossible in the real world, it can become legendary through
poetry, and the speaker and his lover will be like saints to later generations of lovers. (Hence the title:
“The Canonization” refers to the process by which people are inducted into the canon of saints).
It is, a highly sophisticated defense of love against the corrupting values of politics and privilege.

COMMENTARY

Ode on a Grecian Urn is one of the five great odes Keats composed in the summer and autumn of 1819.
It was first published in July that year, in a journal called Annals of the Fine Arts, and subsequently in
Keats’s third and final publication, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, and Other Poems (1820). The
poem bears similarities to the ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (which was probably written slightly earlier) in its
exploration of the relationship between imagined beauty and the harsh, changeable reality of everyday
human experience.Urns were used in ancient Greece to hold the ashes of the dead. Keats does not
describe a specific urn in his ode, but he knew Greek art from engravings, and experienced it at first-hand
on visits to the British Museum, which had recently taken possession of the Elgin Marbles. His friend the
artist Benjamin Robert Haydon had taken him to see the marbles in March 1817 and Keats had responded
with two sonnets, published in the Annals in April 1818. Greek sculptures were admired for their formal
perfection and ideal beauty, by which, wrote William Hazlitt in his essay ‘On Gusto’, ‘they are raised
above the frailties of pain or passion’.
COMMENTARY

In his early writing, from his days as a law student, Donne was known for his poems about casual sex and
sleeping around with many women. However, after marrying Anne Moore in 1601, he began to write
passionate, devoted love poems about his adoration for his wife. "The Sunne Rising" is an example of one
of his poems for Anne. Donne's poetry was part of the metaphysical movement, which took place during
the Renaissance. Poetry of the time was known for being elaborate and full of conceits, which is
exemplified in "The Sunne Rising".

An aubade is a poem or song spoken to a lover just as dawn is breaking, presumably after a, shall we say,
pleasant evening. John Donne's "The Sun Rising" proclaims to the sun and to the whole world that his
love is the center of the universe.

It wasn't the first or last time that Donne would make an outrageous claim. Donne was one of
the metaphysical poets of the 17th. The metaphysical poets were famous for making outlandish claims
and metaphors that were intricate and difficult to follow. Many of their contemporary critics claimed that
there was too much brainpower in their poems for any authentic emotion, but a closer look reveals that
beneath all that cleverness beats the heart of a true romantic.

COMMENTARY

Lamia was written in 1819, and published in 1820, after going to Rome and learning about his illness.
Just before he wrote Lamia, he had a brain haemorage, so he knew he was dying. His brother had also just
died, and his brother George was in financial difficulty. George stole from his mother and went gambling
much of the time. When George asked John for money, John had Lamia published to provide the money.
The Greek myth behind the poem is that Lamia had an affair with Zues (one of the Gods). Zues' wife,
Hera was outraged when she found out, and punished Lamia by condemning her to a life of sleeplessness.
Hera also killed Lamia's children, according to some versions of the myth. Lamia hunted for children to
replace the ones she lost, and Zues gave her the ability to take out her own eyes so she could sleep.
In the Victorian era, people thought that Lamia actually hunted for men, not children, which emphasised
the shockingness of her promiscuousness.
However, Lamia is also a woman who has emotions and needs- she is not just a repulsive creature.
Keats believed the poem to be a masterpiece, hoping it would "start a fire in people and give them either
an unpleasant or pleasant sensation". (in a letter he wrote). This means that he just wanted people to
experience the poem, whether they had a good or a bad time reading it.