Claire Bouvier
100072247
Dr. R. Cunningham
ENGL 2283 X2
January 30, 2006
“The Canonization” by John Donne is a poem in which the speaker demands
demanding that he, the speaker, may be allowed to love, : “For God’s sake hold your
tongue, and let me love.”1
The speaker continues to dedicate
the rest of this
stanza by requesting the reader to condemn him of everything else except loving. He
provides examples by asking the reader to critique, according to the English Oxford
Dictionary
,
other problems such as his paralysis, arthritis, old age, and ruined
fortune, : “Or chide my palsy, or my gout;/ My five gray hairs, or ruin’d fortune flout.”2
The speaker even asks the reader to take a look at his own mind and wealth, while
observing royal authority,
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve;
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his Honour, or his Grace;
Or the king’s real, or his stamp’d face
Contemplate, what you will, approve.” 3
However, the reader suggests
all of this is insignificant if we, as the reader
not let him simply love, “So you will let me love.”4
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do
The second stanza begins with the speaker calling attention to the reader once
again, asking, “Alas! Alas! Who’s injured by my love?”5 The speaker’s tone suggests that
he needs no reply, for it is the speaker himself who responds by saying that his sighs have
not drowned ships, his tears have not flood
the earth, his colds have not destroyed
spring and the heat of his veins have not killed anyone during the plague.6 John Donne’s
book, Donne’s Poetry proposes that the next two lines of “The Canonization” is an
illustration of how men will inevitably find wars to fight and lawyers will seek debatable
men and likewise, the speaker will find love.7
In stanza two the speaker justifies how love is simply unavoidable. However, in
stanza three he paints several metaphors explaining the powerful and enticing emotion of
love. He says, “Call’s what you will, we are made such by love”8 and then begins
demonstrating the metaphorical images of love:
Call her one, me another fly,
We’re tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find th’eagle and the dove
The phoenix riddle hath more with
By us; we two being one, are it;
The speaker suggests that he is like a fly, attaching himself to her as if it were a means of
survival.9 However the speaker also entails that he and his lover are tapers and that “at
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16-18
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our own cost die.”10 According to the OED
the word “taper” means candle. It may
be suggested that they will even risk dying because of their love, like that of a burning
candle.
The speaker then illustrates he and his lover as if they are a powerful eagle
and a serene dove, “And we in us find th’eagle and the dove”11 and that despite the
comments and wit of the phoenix, “The phoenix riddle hath more wit”12 they are two, but
become one, “By us; we two being one, are it.”13 The speaker finishes this stanza by
emphasizing that this bond between the lovers is so natural and that despite who they are
they will die and rise the same
;
confirming how love is so unexplainable,
“We die and rise the same, and prove/ Mysterious by this love.”14
Following the speaker’s metaphorical images of the “unexplainable” love, he
replies, “We can die by it, if not live by love,”15 suggesting that even if he and his lover
are unable to live by love they will be able to die by it, which echoes stanza three when
he and his lover are like candles where at their own cost they will die.16 John Donne
writes of love as if it is an eternal meaning. Love is simply more profound then
just
existing during one’s lifetime. Love carries on even after our funeral, “and if unfit for
tomb or hearse”17 it will become a legend and appreciated for others in the form of
poetry, “Our legend be, it will be fit for verse.”18 “And if no piece of chronicle we prove,/
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We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms.”19 In addition, the speaker also highlights that even a
man put into a “well-wrought urn”20 (defined by the OED
as an ancient Greek vase
that holds the cremations of the dead body), is equivalent to a famous man with a large
tomb, “The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs”21 because in the end their love will be
sanctified, like the canonization of a saint “And by these hymns, all shall approve/ Us
canonized for love.”22
Continuing the speaker’s thought on the “canonization of their love” he begins
stanza five with, “And thus invoke us, “You, whom reverend love”
23
introducing
how the rest of this stanza is a comparison between the lover’s canonization to that of a
saint’s canonization:
Made one another’s hermitage;
You, to whom love was peace, that now rage;
Who did the whole world’s soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes;
So made such mirrors, and spies
That they did all to you epitomizeCountries, towns courts beg from above
A pattern of your love
Prior to these lines, the speaker has defined his love as a canonization. It is in the last
eight lines of John Donne’s “The Canonization” that he takes the opportunity to share
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with the reader the wealth and power of love, apart from the terrible earthly problems.24
Following this the speaker secures the reader by proposing, “That they did all to you
epitomize-/ Countries, towns, courts beg from above/ A pattern of your love.”25 Here the
speaker concludes by saying that after others read of the speaker’s love many will try and
to attain the love that the speaker illustrates throughout John Donne’s “The
Canonization.”
Bibliography
"gout." The Oxford English Dictionary 2nd ed. 1989. 16 February 2006.
http://dictionary.oed.com
Hunt, Clay. Donne's Poetry - Essays in Literary Analysis. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1954.
"palsy." The Oxford English Dictionary 2nd ed. 1989. 16 February 2006.
http://dictionary.oed.com
Parker, Derek. John Donne and his World. 1st ed. London: Thames and Hudson,
1975.
"taper." The Oxford English Dictionary 2nd ed. 1989. 16 February 2006.
http://dictionary.oed.com
"urn." The Oxford English Dictionary 2nd ed. 1989. 16 February 2006.
http://dictionary.oed.com
Grades
Following MLA rules
Successfully1 formatting within electronic template
Meaningful title
Effective2 incorporation of two or more secondary
sources
24
25
Line 38-42
Line 43-45
4/10%
25/25%
0/5%
0/20%
Explicatory value
Imaginative adaptation of electronic template that does
not violate copyright or the fit of your page into the class
site
Total
20/40%
Bonus
/10%
49%
COMMENTS: The primary goal of an explication is to help a reader
understand the poem. To do this, you have to communicate a sense
that you understand the poem, and I’m afraid that sense is too often
missing in this paper. Toward the end of the paper your command of
the poem gets stronger, and I think that had you written this paper and
then used it as the basis for subsequent revisions you could eventually
have produced a paper that shed some light on the poem.
You seem to have neglected to consult the MLA style guides
provided on the Library’s website, and this has hurt your effort, as has
your failure to incorporate into this paper two secondary sources.