Canonization
By John Donne
John Donne (1572-1631)
• He was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary
born into a Catholic family, a remnant of the Catholic
Revival, who reluctantly became a cleric in the Church of
England.
• He was the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London during
1621-1631. He is considered as the pre-eminent
representative of the metaphysical poets.
• His poetical works are noted for their metaphorical and
sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious
poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, and
satires. He is also known for his sermons.
Canonization
• The poem was first published in 1633 in Donne’s
posthumous collection of Songs and Sonnets. It is a
five stanza poem that is separated into sets of nine
lines. The lines rhyme in the pattern of abbacccaa,
alternating as the poet saw fit from stanza to stanza.
In regards to the meter, Donne was less consistent.
There are moments in the text in which he
uses iambic pentameter and some cases iambic
tetrameter. In the last line of every stanza he
uses iambic trimeter, or a line with three sets of two
beats.
• The speaker of the poem is an old man who has just
got the good luck of having a young beloved! But,
unluckily, he is being disturbed by a man who comes
to a place where he is making love. This intruder (one
who disturbs) seems to have told him not to do like
this. The old lover gives energy to reply to him.
Donne's "Canonization" is an example of
metaphysical poetry. It uses conceits, allusions from
the medieval philosophy of metaphysics, a dramatic
situation and an impassioned monologue, a speech-
like rhythm, and colloquial language, all of which
make it a typical "metaphysical" poem.
• The personal in the poem speaks about the
transformation of worldly lovers into holy saints as in
the Catholic Christian custom of 'canonization'. The
speaker in the poem claims that he and his beloved will
be canonized when the poet immortalizes their love,
and that lovers of the future will invoke to them to give
them the strength of spiritual love. The physical
passion is to unite them into one soul and transform
them into saints of love.
• The poem takes the form of a drama where the speaker
is speaking back with angry arguments against a third
person who seems to have told him not to indulge in
such love affair in old age! The speaker argues with the
intruding stranger so as to justify his metaphysical logic
of love. As the argument develops, the comparison of
the relation between lovers develops with other
metaphors of myth, religion and so on.
• The speaker equates worldly human love with the
ascetic life of unworldly saints. The whole poem
can be seen as an extension of the central unusual
comparison of the canonization of a lover! The
poem makes an impressive beginning with an
abrupt jump into the situation: 'Hold your tongue
and let me love.' The lines are highly dramatic.
They illustrate the shock tactic used in most of
Donne's metaphysical poems.
• The argument in the poem is forceful, suggestive
and witty. The speaker uses colloquial words,
rough idioms and broken rhythm, all of which
characterize metaphysical poems.
• 'Canonization' links together disharmonious images. In
other words, there is 'a yoking together of
heterogeneous images by violence'. As the speaker
faces an intruder and argues with him, he links 'lover's
sigh' with 'merchant's ships', 'colds' with 'spring', 'heat'
with 'plague' and 'love songs' with divine hymns. As the
argument proceeds, the comparison of the relation
between lovers moves from the register of trade and
myth to a climax where true lovers are equated with
canonized saints.
• Fusion of emotion and intellect is another important
feature of the poem. The fusion is observed in the
comparison of the lovers to the mysterious phoenix and
the divine saints. The speaker assumes that like the
phoenix, the lovers would 'die and rise at the same time'
and prove 'mysterious by their love'.
• The poet is both sensuous and realistic in his
treatment of love. The romantic affair and the
moral status of the worldly lovers are compared to
the ascetic life of unworldly saints.
• The poem uses an elaborate conceit. In the
beginning the speaker expresses his commitment
to love. He addresses an intruding stranger and
warns him to keep out of the lover's way. Next, he
discusses love in terms of 'sighs', 'cold' and 'heat'.
In the lines that follow, the poet uses more and
more of disharmonious associations. He equates
lovers to 'flies' and 'tapers', 'Eagle' and 'Dove',
'Phoenix' and 'saints'.
Literary Devices
• Alliteration: ‘l’ is repeated in line 1: "For God's sake
hold your tongue, and let me love" and ‘f’ is repeated
in line 3: "My five grey hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout."
But Donne is just getting started, folks.
• Consonace: ‘l’ sound is scattered throughout the poem,
for example, in lines 16-17: “Soldiers find wars, and
lawyers find out still/ Litigious men, which quarrels
move.”
• Assonance: the long ‘i’ echoing in “We die and rise the
same, and prove” (26) and even internal rhyme in lines
28-29: “We can die by it, if not live by love,/ And if
unfit for tomb or hearse.”
• Anaphora: The repetition of “your [blank]” ties line
4 together: “With wealth your state, your mind with
arts improve,” as the repetition of “Call [blank]” does
with lines 19 and 20: “Call’s what you will, we are
made such by love;/ Call her one, me another fly.”
The each stanza’s first line and each stanza’s last line
ends on the same word “love”.
• Bird imagery: in the form of metaphors which the
speaker uses to describe himself and his lover. Each
of the birds holds a specific symbolic importance.
Line 20: Bugs “Call us nasty bugs if you want,” he’s
saying here, “but we’re really much more than that.”
• Line 22: the speaker notes that “we in us find”
elements of both these birds, both the (presumably
male) speaker and his female lover both contain
elements of the powerful eagle (typically associated
with masculinity) and the peaceful dove (typically
associated with femininity). This is a radical idea
moving past gender differences as the male and
female lover merge into each other: “to one neutral
thing both sexes fit” (25).
• Lines 23-27: The phoenix - The speaker notes that the
couple is made “Mysterious by this love” (27). Their
love is like the magical powers of the immortal
phoenix.