Claire Bouvier
100072247
Dr. R. Cunningham
ENGL 2283 X2
January 30, 2006
“Let Me Love”
“The Canonization” by John Donne is a poem, in which the speaker demands that
he, be allowed to love: “For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love”(Donne l. 1).
The rest of this stanza, the speaker requests that the reader condemn him of everything
else except loving.
“Or chide my palsy, or my gout;” (l. 2) suggests that the speaker
prefers the reader to first critique problems of “palsy” and “gout” which is defined as
“paralysis” and “arthritis” (Oxford English Dictionary
). He also asks the reader to
critique “My five gray hairs, or ruin’d fortune flout; (Donne l. 3)” which is understood by
the reader as old age and a ruined fortune. The rest of the stanza the speaker requests the
reader to look to his own mind and wealth, and comparing
it to positions of the
upper class:
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 (ll. 4-8).”
Essentially, the speaker in the end of the stanza is asking that the reader will let him
simply love, “So you will let me love (l. 9).”
The second stanza begins with the speaker asking, “Alas! Alas! Who’s injured by
my love? (l. 10)” 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
flooded the earth, his colds have not destroyed spring and the heat of his veins have not
The next two lines of “The
killed anyone during the plague (ll. 11-15).
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 (Hunt, 301).
In stanza two the speaker justifies how love is simply unavoidable. In stanza three
he uses metaphors to explain the powerful and enticing emotions of love. He says, “Call’s
what you will, we are made such by love” (l. 19) and illustrates 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 butterfly or a moth fluttering around a candle
(Kermode 439), attaching himself to his lover as if it were a means of survival: “at our
own cost die” (Donne l. 21). It may be suggested that they will even risk dying because
of their love, like that of a burning candle.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us; we two being one, are it.
Following this, the speaker says:
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die, and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love (ll. 23-27).
The myth of the phoenix is what illuminates this section of “The Canonization.” The
lovers illustrate how a single creature, the mythical phoenix, can contain both sexes
(Kermode 439). This myth explains how the lovers can die and rise as one, “We die, and
rise the same” (l. 26) and consequently “prove/ Mysterious by this love (ll. 26,27).
Following the speaker’s metaphorical images of the love, he replies
, “We
can die by it, if not live by love,” (l. 28) suggesting that even if he and his lover are
unable to live by love they will be able to die by it, echoing stanza three when he and his
lover are like candles, where at their own cost they will die
(l. 21). John Donne
writes of love as if it is an eternal meaning. Love is simply more profound than just
existing during one’s lifetime. Love carries on even after our funeral, “and if unfit for
tomb or hearse” (l. 29) it will become a legend and be appreciated by for others in the
form of poetry, “Our legend be, it will be fit for verse” (l. 30). The speaker also
highlights that even a man put into a “well-wrought urn” (l. 33) (defined by the Oxford
English Dictionary
as an ancient Greek vase that holds the cremations of a dead
body), is equivalent to a famous man with a large tomb, “The greatest ashes, as half-acre
tombs” (l. 34) 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” (ll. 35,36).
Continuing the speaker’s thought on the “canonization of their love”, stanza five
shows how this stanza is a comparison between the lover’s canonization and 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
In the fourth stanza, the speaker has defined his love as a canonization. However, in
stanza five of John Donne’s “The Canonization” the speaker discovers how he and his
lover’s roles are like the saints of love, whereby lovers of the future will seek for their
help (Hunt, 301): “That they did all to you epitomize-/ Countries, towns, courts beg from
above/ A pattern of your love” (ll. 43-45). Here the speaker concludes by saying that after
others read of the speaker’s love many will try 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.
Kermode, Frank. The Oxford Authors John Donne. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1990.
"palsy." The Oxford English Dictionary 2nd ed. 1989. 16 February 2006.
http://dictionary.oed.com
This is much more of an explication than was your first effort, but you need to
provide more explanation of many of the interpretations you offer. In essence, with
an explication you want to ‘show your work’ almost the way you do in elementary
algebra where even when you get the wrong answer you can still achieve a passing
grade by demonstrating that you know what calculations to make. In short, your
reader doesn’t have to agree with your interpretation, but must be able to see that it
is based on a reasonable extraction of evidence from the poem.
Revised grade: 60%