The Canonization by John Donne

Introduction:
In the poem, the poet demands the complainer to stop hindering their lives and leave them alone so that
they could continue loving each other without any hindrance. The lover says that there is nobody in the
world who is being hurt by their love. Their love is not causing any trouble in the society; their tears are not
causing floods; Spring won’t go away due to his coldness. Likewise, the lover wants to prove that his love is
not creating any hindrance in the society. The lovers are compared to candles that will burn out on their
own. Their love is a beautiful example of the world that will be immortalized.

Summary:
Stanza Wise:
Stanza 1:
In the stanza one, the lover is in a peevish mood. He addresses this verse to a complainer.
Apparently, he wants to say that one should keep himself busy by doing appropriate work
rather than keeping a check on him and his lover.

The lover tells the complainer that he can make fun of him as he is suffering from diseases
and has grey hair but he won’t gain anything by that. He says that he can criticize his ill health
but not his tendency to love. He questions the complainer why doesn’t he work and improve
his lifestyle or make some money instead disturbing or interfering with their lives?

The lovers have so many things to get engaged in, so they say the addressee not to disturb
them. She says that he needs to think what he is going to do.

The Canonization Stanza 2:

This stanza contains the elaborate metaphysical aspects of the poem.

“Alas, alas, who’s injured by my love?

What merchant’s ships have my sighs drowned?”

The lovers are not making any war or spreading diseases in the society. They respect others
property. The poet wants to say that his love injures nobody. It’s harmless. The lover is
tactful, full of emotion and witty.
He says, her sights are not responsible for the drowning of the ship. His tears are not
responsible for the flood or floating off the ground. Spring won’t go away due to his coldness.
Nature has its own natural course and the lovers are not harming it. The heat in his veins has
not increased the number of the people who die of plague. His love is harmless.

The lover says that the soldiers are doing their duty by going to wars and the lawyers by
fighting cases in the court. But what the lover wants is to love his partner.

The Canonization Stanza 3:

The lover does not care if he is called by any name because love has made them so. He says
that they are like flies. They have a very short existence. He presumes the life to be short,
just like the candle.

He compares himself as Eagle and his lover as Dove; they are complementary to each other.
They love each other from the bottom of their heart.

According to the lover, the riddle of Phoenix is there in their existence. They have two bodies,
but they are one. Like the Phoenix, they die and they rise from their ashes.

The Canonization Stanza 4:

The poet begins with the thought that, if they cannot live by love, they can die by it. He
further says that if their love is not fit for tombs and hearse, they will find their place in
poetry. So, basically, they will find their place in the love sonnets. He says that he and his
lover will be canonized by his love.

He believes, love doesn’t die on death. If it is a platonic or desirable love, then it tends to
exist even after death. Both their ashes will be amalgamated or get merged if kept together.

The Canonization Stanza 5:

In the final stanza of The Canonization, John Donne wants to reflect their ideal pattern of
love. He says that they will be declared saints and will be rewarded sainthood of love. The
lover also says that all the lovers will beg their pattern of love. People from various countries,
towns, and courts will be praising their love pattern and will ideally follow it.
 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!"
 John Donne

The English writer and Anglican cleric

John Donne is considered now to be the
preeminent metaphysical poet of his time.
His work is distinguished by its emotional
and sonic intensity and its capacity to
plumb the paradoxes of faith, human and
divine love, and the possibility of salvation. Donne often employs conceits, or
extended metaphors, to yoke together “heterogenous ideas,” in the words of
Samuel Johnson, thus generating the powerful ambiguity for which his work is
famous. After a resurgence in his popularity in the early 20th century, Donne’s
standing as a great English poet, and one of the greatest writers of English
prose, is now assured.

The history of Donne’s reputation is the most remarkable of any major writer
in English; no other body of great poetry has fallen so far from favor for so
long. In Donne’s own day his poetry was highly prized among the small circle
of his admirers, who read it as it was circulated in manuscript, and in his later
years he gained wide fame as a preacher. For some 30 years after his death
successive editions of his verse stamped his powerful influence upon English
poets. During the Restoration his writing went out of fashion and remained so
for several centuries. Throughout the 18th century, and for much of the 19th
century, he was little read and scarcely appreciated. It was not until the end of
the 1800s that Donne’s poetry was eagerly taken up by a growing band of
avant-garde readers and writers. His prose remained largely unnoticed until
1919.

In the first two decades of the 20th century Donne’s poetry was decisively
rehabilitated. Its extraordinary appeal to modern readers throws light on the
Modernist movement, as well as on our intuitive response to our own times.
Donne may no longer be the cult figure he became in the 1920s and 1930s,
when T.S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats, among others, discovered in his
poetry the peculiar fusion of intellect and passion and the alert
contemporariness which they aspired to in their own art. He is not a poet for all
tastes and times; yet for many readers Donne remains what Ben Jonsonjudged
him: “the first poet in the world in some things.” His poems continue to
engage the attention and challenge the experience of readers who come to him
afresh. His high place in the pantheon of the English poets now seems secure.
Donne’s love poetry was written nearly 400 years ago; yet one reason for its
appeal is that it speaks to us as directly and urgently as if we overhear a
present confidence. For instance, a lover who is about to board ship for a long
voyage turns back to share a last intimacy with his mistress: “Here take my
picture” (Elegy V). Two lovers who have turned their backs upon a threatening
world in “The Good Morrow“ celebrate their discovery of a new world in each
other: