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The Canonization
POEM TEXT 37 And thus invoke us: You, whom reverend love
38 Made one another's hermitage;
1 For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love, 39 You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
2 Or chide my palsy, or my gout, 40 Who did the whole world's soul contract, and
3 My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune, flout, drove
4 With wealth your state, your mind with arts 41 Into the glasses of your eyes
improve, 42 (So made such mirrors, and such spies,
5 Take you a course, get you a place, 43 That they did all to you epitomize)
6 Observe His Honor, or His Grace, 44 Countries, towns, courts: Beg from above
7 Or the King's real, or his stampèd face 45 A pattern of your love!
8 Contemplate; what you will, approve,
9 So you will let me love.

10 Alas, alas, who's injured by my love?

SUMMARY
11 What merchant's ships have my sighs drowned? Listen: just be quiet already and let me be in love. You can go
12 Who says my tears have overflowed his ground? ahead and make fun of my shaky hands or my sore joints, or
13 When did my colds a forward spring remove? taunt me for my gray hair or my poverty. You can go make your
14 When did the heats which my veins fill fortune, or you can educate yourself in some craft; you can take
up a new career, or go find a role in a fancy nobleman's retinue,
15 Add one more to the plaguy bill?
following some lord or some high-up clergyman; you can serve
16 Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
the King, or the coins with his face printed on them; you can do
17 Litigious men, which quarrels move, whatever you like, so long as you leave me alone and let me be
18 Though she and I do love. in love.
Come on, now: who does my love hurt? Have my lovesick sighs
19 Call us what you will, we are made such by love;
sunk any ships? Have my tears flooded anyone's land? Have the
20 Call her one, me another fly, times when my lover coldly ignored my advances stopped
21 We're tapers too, and at our own cost die, spring from coming? Did the fever of love in my veins ever add
22 And we in us find the eagle and the dove. one single death to the register of plague victims? Soldiers still
23 The phoenix riddle hath more wit go to war, and lawyers still find argumentative people to sue
24 By us: we two being one, are it. each other, in spite of the fact that my lady and I love each
25 So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit. other.
26 We die and rise the same, and prove Whatever you say my lady and I are like, love makes us that way.
27 Mysterious by this love. You might say we're as mortal and lustful as flies, or like
shrinking candles burned up by passion. We're strong and wise
28 We can die by it, if not live by love, as eagles and sweet and meek as doves. We embody the legend
29 And if unfit for tombs and hearse of the phoenix (the bird that burns up and then is reborn from
its own ashes): the two of us together, when we have sex, make
30 Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
one phoenix, creating a hybrid androgynous being out of two
31 And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
bodies. Like the phoenix, we "die" (that is, have orgasms) and
32 We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms; then get up again. Our love, you see, makes us into a magical
33 As well a well-wrought urn becomes creature.
34 The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
If we can't live on our love, we can certainly die from it. And
35 And by these hymns, all shall approve even if our love story isn't exactly something you could carve on
36 Us canonized for love: a tomb or a hearse, it'll be just the ticket for poetry. We might
not make it into the history books, but we'll make a home for
ourselves in the stanzas of sonnets. Just as an elegant, well-

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made urn or a huge, mighty tomb is the right home for the they know that “dying” is Renaissance-era slang for “having an
ashes of heroes, the poetry I write will be a fitting monument to orgasm.”) In other words, love makes them everything to each
us. Reading it, everyone will agree that we should be made other—and even makes them into each other, turning them into
saints for our devotion to love. a single immortal being that can “die” over and over again and
When people want to pray to us, here's what they'll say: You two still live!
lovers, whom love made into each other's sacred, private chapel; These images are passionate, but they’re also sacred. Both the
you two, who found peace in a love that is now cause for passionate idea of fusing with a beloved and the idea of death and
devotion; you two, who shrunk the soul of the world itself down into resurrection fit right into Donne’s Christianity: the first image
the reflective mirrors of your eyes, seeing in each other everything echoes the biblical notion that Christ literally becomes part of
that exists, making each other into the whole wide world with its Christians, and the second echoes the tale of Christ’s death and
countries, cities, and noble courts: ask God to send us the pattern resurrection. By adoring each other so completely, then, the
that you built your love upon! lovers play out the Christian story in their own lives, mirroring
what the passionately religious Donne saw as the order of the
universe itself. In fact, they become holy through their love,
THEMES treating each other’s very bodies as “hermitage[s]” (that is,
private chapels for solitary holy men).
THE POWER AND HOLINESS OF LOVE To this speaker, then, love is a “canonization”: it makes true
lovers into saints, devoted to (and made greater by) adoration.
“The Canonization” suggests that love isn’t just a silly
By mirroring the Christian story, the poem suggests, deep love
game for young people to play, but a serious, lasting,
takes people very close to the divine indeed. And if that’s true,
and even holy force. The poem’s speaker, a middle-aged man,
he and his beloved aren’t twitterpated fools: they’re veritable
has fallen deeply in love, and he spends the first stanzas of the
saints, whose “pattern” later lovers should strive to follow.
poem telling a friend of his to stop making fun of him for his
later-in-life romance and just let him be in love, already. Love, he
insists, is much more than an emotional storm that silly kids get Where this theme appears in the poem:
caught up in. It’s a power so strong, transformative, and • Lines 1-45
purifying that true lovers are “canonized” by their love. In other
words, love can make people into saints, wholeheartedly
devoted to a sacred task. LOVE, POETRY, AND IMMORTALITY
Love, the poem’s speaker suggests, is often wrongly considered Love, in “The Canonization,” is a mighty and even holy
the purview of the young, starry-eyed, and foolish. When the force. But in spite of love’s greatness, the speaker is
speaker’s friend makes fun of him for falling in love at an age aware that love stories aren’t always remembered in books or
when he has “gray hairs” and creaky joints, the speaker replies monuments the way that, say, tales of war or politics are
that his love doesn’t do anybody any harm—and in doing so, he (maybe because they’re just too personal). And yet, the poem’s
reveals that he’s got a pretty level-headed sense of what love is speaker reflects, perhaps a big stone monument wouldn’t even
actually like. He mocks the kind of clichéd love poetry that be the right way to honor a great love. This poem suggests that
suggests love changes the whole world, observing that his it takes poetry to build true love the monument it deserves:
“sighs” haven’t sunk a single ship and his “tears” haven’t poetry is the only form that can rightly reflect love’s power and
“overflowed” one field (and that his friend should therefore preserve it eternally.
leave him alone—his love isn’t causing problems for anyone!). Love stories don’t always make it into the “chronicles” (or
The speaker’s rejection of over-the-top cliché suggests he history books), the speaker observes: love is too private and too
knows love well and understands what it isn’t as well as what it personal to be a matter of historical record. Nobody carves a
is. love story onto the side of a “tomb” or builds a “well-wrought
In fact, this mature lover knows that his love can do something urn” (in other words, an elegant funerary vase) to preserve the
much more powerful than whip up storms: it has a huge internal ashes of a love affair. Monuments like these are reserved for
effect on him and his beloved. Love makes them so wrapped up people who performed publicly heroic acts; great warriors,
in each other that they see the whole world in the magic leaders, and artists get memorialized in stone, but great lovers
“glasses” (or mirrors) of each other’s eyes. They’re so deeply in don’t get those kinds of tributes.
love that they seem to become one being: when they have sex, The only fitting monument for his own love, the speaker
the speaker feels that they fuse into a “phoenix,” an immortal concludes, is poetry. Perhaps that’s because poetry is such a
mythical creature that burns up, dies, and is reborn from its good match for love: poetry “becomes” (or suits) love because it
own ashes. (Readers might understand this allusion better if can record what love feels like (try doing that with a stone

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“urn”). But it also “becomes” love because, like love, it’s timeless. it used to be—but he doesn't mind being teased about any of
Great poetry can endure for centuries, making the long-dead that, so long as he can go on being in love. Love, in other words,
loves it records feel alive and fresh. It can also show readers means he doesn't care one bit about anything else. This poem
that love felt just the same to people hundreds of years ago, will celebrate passion, whenever and wherever passion arises.
reminding them that love itself really is eternal: its “pattern”
remains the same. LINES 4-6
“The Canonization” itself thus becomes the proof of its own With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,
argument: this centuries-old poem has survived, and by Take you a course, get you a place,
surviving, it has immortalized the love it describes. Observe His Honor, or His Grace,
Having made it clear that he doesn't care one bit what his
Where this theme appears in the poem: friend says about him so long as they "let [him] love," the
speaker further suggests that his friend should consider getting
• Lines 28-36 a hobby, already, and leaving him alone. The way he says it
reveals a few things about his character.
Listen to the chiasmus in this line, for example:
LINE-BY
LINE-BY-LINE
-LINE ANAL
ANALYSIS
YSIS
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,
LINES 1-3
For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love, This sentence structure folds over on itself, forming an elegant
Or chide my palsy, or my gout, reflection. In essence, the speaker is simply telling his friend to
My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune, flout, find something to do other than mocking him: to go earn some
"The Canonization" begins with an explosion of frustration. money or learn some new "arts" (skills or crafts). But his snappy
Without preamble, the speaker bursts out: "For God's sake phrasing shows readers that this lover is no fool. Whatever love
hold your tongue, and let me love." Slapped awake like this, has done to him, it hasn't touched his intellect.
readers are primed to figure out what on earth could have There's some similarly stylish writing in these next lines. Take a
gotten the speaker so touchy. look at the par
parallelism
allelism here:
Some friend or other, clearly, has been teasing the speaker
about being in love. So far, so normal: mocking lovers is a Tak
akee yyou
ou a course, get yyou
ou a place,
timeless hobb
hobbyy, popular for as long as lovers have existed. But Observ
Observee His Honor, or His Grace,
the speaker's next lines hint that his friend isn't just making fun
of him for being all infatuated. So long as his friend "let[s him] This rhythmic list of commands, all similarly phrased, makes the
love," the speaker says, it doesn't bother him one bit if they speaker sound as if he could go on exasperatedly listing
want to mock him for: possibilities forever. There's plenty of better stuff for his friend
to do than make fun of him, these lines suggest.
[...] my palsy
palsy, or my gout
gout, The specific pursuits the speaker recommends here also place
My fivfivee gr
graay hairs
hairs, or ruined fortune [...] the poem in Donne's own 17th-century English world. To "take
you a course" simply means to choose a career. But to "get you
With "palsy" (shaky hands), "gout" (creaky joints), and "five gray a place" or "Observe His Honor, or His Grace" means
hairs" (which explain themselves), this speaker is no spring something more specific:
chicken. And not only is he older than he used to be, but he's
poorer, too: he once had a "fortune," but it's gone now. (Perhaps • A "place," in this context, means a position at the
he's even down on his luck in other ways: a "fortune" can mean court of a wealthy nobleman—the kind of guy you'd
both one's wealth and one's fate.) call "His Honor" or "His Grace," that is.
In other words, this speaker is a middle-aged man who's both • These lines suggest that this speaker and his teasing
down-at-heel and head-over-heels. And who's more mockable friend are courtiers: men lower in the Renaissance
than that? Passionate love is often considered the purview of pecking order than the nobility, but higher than
most.
the young and silly
silly; older people who fall hard for each other, in
• Still, they're dependent on the patronage (and favor)
Donne's 17th century as much as now, are easy to accuse of
of rich men. The speaker's "ruined fortune" suggests
midlife crises or plain foolishness.
that he might have fallen out of some nobleman's
But this speaker stands ready to defend himself against such good graces—a predicament not so far from
charges. Sure, he's old, and sure, his purse is a little lighter than Donne
Donne's 's own
own, at certain moments in his life.

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In just a few lines, then, readers learn a great deal about this invokes in that first line—a figure also said, in Donne's Christian
speaker, less through what he says about himself than through tradition, to literally be "Love," the alpha and omega of all
how he talks and what he talks about. He's a brilliant wit, an existence
xistence. Donne, a passionately religious writer (and a noted
upper-crust guy fallen on hard times—and a person who values clergyman), will use this poem to argue that erotic love isn't
love above all else. silly, sordid, or profane: it's divine.

LINES 7-9 But before the speaker establishes what love is, he'll show what
love isn't.
Or the King's real, or his stampèd face
Contemplate; what you will, approve, LINES 10-15
So you will let me love. Alas, alas, who's injured by my love?
Besides getting a job or finding a place in a nobleman's court, What merchant's ships have my sighs drowned?
the speaker goes on, his friend might consider occupying Who says my tears have overflowed his ground?
himself in much loftier ways—or much lowlier ones. The friend, When did my colds a forward spring remove?
the speaker says, might choose to "contemplate" either "the When did the heats which my veins fill
King's real, or his stampèd face." That is: Add one more to the plaguy bill?
In the first stanza, the speaker exploded at a teasing friend,
• The friend could get a job serving the King himself telling them: "For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love."
(King James I of England, at the time this poem was Now, the speaker seems to tease his friend right back.
written).
• But they could also just get pragmatic and Listen to the epizeuxis in the second stanza's first line:
"contemplate" coins with the King's face "stampèd"
(or imprinted) upon them—in other words, focus on Alas
Alas, alas
alas, who's injured by my love?
getting rich.
There's some hyperbolic humor going on here. "Alas, alas" is the
With this final bit of advice, the speaker suggests that his friend sort of thing you'd cry to lament a real disaster. But here, the
can do anything else in the world—"what you will" (or "whatever speaker uses a strong repetition simply to say: Come on now, it's
you want")—so long as they stop making fun of him and "let a shame to badger me over something so harmless as falling in love.
[him] love." There's more of a "tsk, tsk" than a "woe is me" tone happening
Notice that all the courses the speaker has recommended are here. Readers might even hear the speaker putting on a wry,
grounded, pragmatic, and status-focused: getting jobs, learning mocking voice—especially as he launches into a series of
skills, courting favor with noblemen, or just plain money- comical rhetorical questions
questions.
grubbing. If you don't have any time or respect for love, the In lines 11-15, the speaker asks, in a variety of ways, When did
speaker seems to say, then just focus on worldly things. Go be a big my love ever hurt anyone? At the same time, he makes a satirical
shot, I don't care. point about the clichés of love poetry. Every one of the
Love, in contrast with all these social-climbing pursuits, must disastrous examples he gives suggests that Donne is mocking
therefore be something rather more elevated, rather more not just the speaker's cynical friend, but a whole host of other
sublime. Here at the end of the first stanza, repetitions begin to 16th- and 17th-century poets:
suggest just how sacred the speaker believes love is.
• The idea that a lovelorn sigh could sink a ship (or
Take a look back at the first line of this stanza: launch one
one, for that matter) could come straight out
of Christopher Marlowe
Marlowe.
For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me lo
lovve, • Floods of heartbrok
heartbrokenen tears and fatal fe
fevvers of
passion are both pure Shakespeare.
Now take a look at the last line of this stanza: • And Edmund Spenser knew plenty about how an icy
winter of indifference might chill an early "spring" of
So you will let me lo
lovve. affection.

"Love" literally begins and ends this stanza. As the poem Of course, the speaker isn't making direct references to the
continues, readers will notice that "love" also begins and ends poems and plays linked above. But that's exactly the point. All
every other stanza: it's the place where the poem starts and the the metaphors he brings up here—the pains of love as a storm,
place where it ends. a disaster, or a disease—are so common that it's easy to think of
By structuring the poem this way, Donne suggests that love has countless examples from the work of all sorts of Renaissance
more than a little in common with the "God" the speaker writers.

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The speaker's big point here, then, is that love isn't the way it's Listen to the rhythms of lines 16-18 for one good example:
often described in poetry. He's old enough and wise enough to
know that love doesn't shake the world to its very foundations. Sol
Soldiers | find wars
wars, | and la
law
w- | yers find | out still
Being a lover with "five gray hairs" and "gout" has its Liti
ti- | gious men
men, | which quar
quar- | rels mo
movve,
advantages: this mature speaker knows better than to believe Though she | and I | do lolovve.
that anyone besides his lover gives a hoot about his love.
What's more, all of these examples describe the supposed • That first foot in line 16 is not an iamb, but its
effects of unrequited love and heartbreak. And this speaker's opposite: a trochee
trochee, a foot with a DUM
DUM-da rhythm. It
love (as readers will soon see) is fully requited, thank you very starts a line of otherwise steady iambic pentameter
(five iambs in a row) with a bang.
much. Perhaps part of the reason he brings up all these
• Then, the next two lines get steadily shorter: line 17
examples is to suggest that his passion is more harmless than
is in iambic tetrameter (four iambs), and line 18 is in
most: not even he himself is "injured by [his] love."
iambic trimeter (three iambs).
LINES 16-18 • The meter thus reflects exactly what the speaker is
doing: boiling things down to their essence, reaching
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still a final firm conclusion about what love can and
Litigious men, which quarrels move, cannot do.
Though she and I do love.
The speaker concludes his series of witty rhetorical questions LINES 19-22
by observing that his love doesn't change one thing in the outer
Call us what you will, we are made such by love;
world. All around him, it's business as usual: "soldiers" still "find
Call her one, me another fly,
wars" to kill each other in, and "lawyers" still find "litigious
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
men"—temperamental fellows who are quick to sue each
And we in us find the eagle and the dove.
other—to take sides in courtroom "quarrels."
The speaker has just finished rejecting a host of poetic clichés
In other words, the speaker says, the fact that "she and I do
about love, observing that love doesn't sink any ships or spread
love" doesn't mean that everything in the world gets turned
any fevers. But here at the beginning of the third stanza, he
upside down by storms of sighs and floods of tears—or that
turns right around and embraces a series of traditional
everyone in the world holds hands and sings! One couple's love
metaphors for lovers.
doesn't do much to the outside world for good or for ill, no
matter what the poets say. His teasing friend wouldn't be wrong, he notes, to say that love
transforms him and his beloved into flies, melting candles, or
Again, there's a resigned, mature perspective here. The eagles and doves. In other words: some of the things that
speaker, unlike plenty of lo
lovvers
ers, doesn't see himself as the
people always say about love aren't far off.
center of the universe just because he's in love.
Each of the metaphors the speaker uses here draws on a long
But he is still quietly making a claim that love is something
symbolic tradition:
other than business as usual:
• Flies were a common Renaissance symbol for
• All the combative goings-on of "soldiers" and death—and for lust. Because flies feed on dead
"lawyers" seems to take place somewhere far away meat, Renaissance artists used them as a reminder
from the speaker and his beloved, just like all the that the pleasures of the body (like sex) only last as
status-hunting the speaker recommends to his long as bodies do.
teasing friend back in stanza 1. • "Tapers," or candles, were also an image of both the
• Love, in other words, doesn't change the course of power and brevity of love and life. Every second that
the quarrelsome world—but it might just set lovers a candle glows with the metaphorical "flame" of
apart from that world. passion, it's a second closer to becoming a burnt-out
puddle.
Here at the end of the second stanza, look back at the way this • The "eagle" and the "dove," meanwhile, were both
poem's meter takes shape. Like a lot of Donne's longer poems, birds with some weighty religious meanings:
this one uses a meter that jumps all over the place, from longer ◦ Besides representing wisdom and power,
lines to shorter ones and back again. While most of the lines the eagle was the attribute of St. John
here are roughly iambic—that is, they're built from iambs
iambs, the Evangelist—the Gospel writer often
metrical feet with a da-DUM
DUM rhythm—there's plenty of honored as the most insightful and
variation. sublime. Perhaps it's no coincidence that
John Donne might nod to a namesake

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here. can't last forever. However, in his images of "the eagle and the
◦ And the dove, which stood for peace and dove," he also hinted that he sees something eternal and sacred
love, was also a symbol for the Holy in erotic love. The second part of this stanza will make a daring,
Spirit itself, one of the three persons of witty, fiery claim for the holiness of passion.
the Christian Trinity (alongside Christ
When they're in bed together, the speaker says, he and his
and God the Father).
lover embody the "phoenix riddle"—that is, the story of the
phoenix, the legendary bird said to periodically burn to death,
Readers might notice that all this symbolism suggests two
then arise, reborn, from its own ashes. For obvious reasons, the
things at once:
phoenix was a common Renaissance symbol for resurrection
and new life—and thus, for Christ himself.
• On the one hand, the speaker is agreeing that part
of being a lover is accepting that the pleasures of Here's how the speaker solves that "phoenix riddle":
love—especially sex—last only as long as the human
body does. (That truth might feel particularly • With their bodies joined in sex, he says, he and his
immediate to a middle-aged guy!) lover become "one neutral thing" made of "both
• On the other, he's claiming that he and his lover find sexes": a single androgynous being made from two
all kinds of deathless spiritual virtues in each other: people.
not just love, but wisdom and holiness. • Then, together, they "die" (remember that pun pun?) in
• The poem's juxtaposition of two flavors of fiery passion and "rise" again: they have orgasms,
symbolism thus moves toward the idea that love can and get right back up! (And there's yet another sex
be both fleshly and divine, mortal and immortal. joke in the idea that they can "rise" again. The word
"rise" hints that the speaker isn't just able to "die"
These lines also introduce a pun that's about to become and get out of bed, but "die" and go back to bed: he's
important. Take another look at line 21: sexually inexhaustible.)
• In other words, together, this couple is just like the
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die
die, phoenix, able to die and resurrect over and over
again.
Candles certainly "die," in the sense of melting down and
disappearing. But to "die," in Renaissance slang, also meant "to This sparkling, irreverent joke has serious theological
have an orgasm." Even the word "cost" is a sex joke here: undertones. Reflect on what the speaker is claiming here:
Renaissance lovers were said to "spend" themselves when they
orgasmed, too. • Through passion, he and his lover become one
person.
This mischievous pun has a sting in its tail. This speaker is well • That person can die and resurrect.
aware that he and his lover do literally "die" a little more every
time they "die" in bed: every moment of pleasure is a moment Both of these claims have an awful lot in common with
closer to the grave. Christian beliefs:
All in all, then, these lines introduce an interwoven tapestry of
ideas: the poem is about to explore the relationship between • The idea of God becoming part of believers' bodies
sex, death, and immortality. But the worldly-wise, self- and souls is right at the heart of Christianity: that's
deprecating speaker will investigate these huge themes in the why nearly all Christian denominations take
most playful and punny of ways. Keep an eye out for the word communion, eating bread and drinking wine said
"die": this isn't the last time it's going to pop up. either to be or to represent Christ's body and blood
(depending
depending on whom yyou ou ask
ask).
LINES 23-27 • And the idea that Christ returned from the
The phoenix riddle hath more wit dead—and that everyone will resurrect, at the end of
By us: we two being one, are it. time—is a central tenet of Christian faith.
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove Here, readers might want to look again at the word "love,"
Mysterious by this love. putting in its usual appearance at the end of the stanza, and
remember that even the way the poem repeats the word fits
In the first part of this stanza, the speaker suggested that some
into a Christian framework. If God is love, then isn't passion
traditional images of lovers are just right. He agrees that (as the
divine?
ancient symbols of flies and candles suggest) lovers revel in
bodily pleasure, but also must confront the fact that bodies Divine "love" and mortal, fleshly "love," the conceit of the

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phoenix suggests, might resemble each other much more fittingly celebrated and preserved. Poetry is love's monument
closely than the speaker's cynical friend from the first stanza is and love's shrine. The rest of this stanza will explore why that
able to comprehend. Passionate lovers, wrapped up in each might be.
other and transported far away from the hurly-burly of
"soldiers," "lawyers," and the King's "stampèd face," might LINES 33-36
actually be embodying the sacred drama of the universe. As well a well-wrought urn becomes
And perhaps, the speaker will go on to say, such sacred love can The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
even transcend literal death, not just the punny kind. And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for love:
LINES 28-32 Poetry, the speaker goes on, "becomes" (or suits) lovers in the
We can die by it, if not live by love, same way that a "well-wrought urn" (that is, a beautiful vessel
And if unfit for tombs and hearse for ashes) or a "half-acre tomb" (a vast, grand stone
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; mausoleum) would suit a hero. This idea might invite readers to
And if no piece of chronicle we prove, ask: aside from the fact that the speaker is a poet, why would he feel
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms; that poetry is the most fitting way to honor love?
Lovers might feel immortal when they metaphorically "die" in To answer that question, readers might consider the differences
bed, but the middle-aged speaker knows all too well that such between a "well-wrought urn" and a poem:
resurrections can't go on forever: he and his lover can't "live by
love" eternally. So now, the speaker digs deeper into the idea of • An "urn" or a "tomb" is a solid object made from
death. If he and his lover must die one day, they should at least stone. It stays in one place. And while it might last a
be honored with a fitting monument once they're gone. long time, it's also ultimately as mortal as the ashes
Great lovers, the previous stanza suggested, touch the divine, it contains: once it falls into ruin or erodes away, its
mirroring the eternal love of God in their passion. There's "life" is over.
• A poem, meanwhile, doesn't even need a physical
something glorious about that, something heroic. But unlike
body to live on. It can travel the world, replicating
other heroic figures, lovers don't get commemorated in stone
endlessly through print or copying—and it can live
monuments or "chronicle[d]" in history books after they die.
on as long as someone remembers its words.
Their "legends," the stories of their lives, are "unfit for tomb or
hearse": decorate the side of a coffin with pictures of a couple's
Both love and poetry, then, allow mortal humans to touch
phoenix-like sexual triumph, and people will definitely give you
eternity.
funny looks.
This moment might give readers a little shiver. Like William
Perhaps, for that matter, the glory of love can't be
Shak
Shakespeare
espeare on his belo
belovved
ed, like Walt Whitman on his ferry
ferry,
commemorated properly in stone. Rather, only poetry will do as
John Donne proves his own claim: 400 years after it was
a monument to love. Listen to the language the speaker uses
written, this poem lives on, still singing of deathless passion.
here:
This very "verse" has immortalized both itself and the love it
celebrates.
And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; Through a poetic memorial, then, love really can become
eternal. And "by these hymns"—that is, through the speaker's
This moment of polyptoton stresses that the speaker's point love songs, now presented as sacred music—the whole world
isn't simply that, since you shouldn't carve a lover's triumph on will agree that the speaker and his beloved are "canonized for
a tomb, you might as well write a love poem instead. Rather, the love."
point is that poetry is the right and best way to memorialize With those words, the poem finally gets around to the conceit it
love. hinted at in its title: an extended metaphor of lovers as
Rather than trying to carve all the dynamic (and very private!) "canonized" saints (that is, official and bonafide saints in the
energy of a love story into a commemorative rock, then, the eyes of the Catholic church).
speaker and his lover will "build in sonnets pretty rooms": that The speaker has already made it clear that he sees passionate
is, they'll make a temple to their love out of poetry, not stone. romantic love as next to divine love, a little mirror image of the
(There's a submerged pun here, too: the word "stanza," very "LLove that mo
movves the sun and the other stars
stars" (to borrow a
meaning "a group of lines in a poem," translates to "room" in phrase from Dante). So far, so saintly. But:
Italian.)
In other words: in this poet's opinion, only in a poem can love be • To be officially canonized, prospective saints must
meet all kinds of other stringent requirements: they

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have to perform miracles, and their bodies have to followers might describe him and his beloved:
remain "incorrupt," at least partly untouched by
decay. • They're "one another's hermitage": that is, one
• Luckily for the speaker and his lover, the miracle of another's private, secluded chapel. Again, bodies
an immortal "hymn" like this one—a poem that become divine here: the lovers, this metaphor
preserves the lovers long past their deaths—fits the suggests, were places of holy worship to each other.
bill! • And their love once gave them "peace" and rest, but
now provokes "rage"—a word that here doesn't
LINES 37-39 mean anger, but fervor, as in "all the rage."
◦ In other words, the couple's love now
And thus invoke us: You, whom reverend love
inspires passionate religious devotion
Made one another's hermitage;
(and perhaps other kinds of passion,
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
too!).
As the final stanza begins, readers might want to look back at ◦ The phrasing here suggests that the
the beginning of the poem and think how far the speaker has "peace" and the "rage" of love might be
come. A poem that began as a rebuke to a cynical friend has two sides of the same coin: transcendent
evolved into an exploration of the way that passionate earthly passion might be its own kind of restful
love can touch heavenly immortality. Now, the speaker bliss.
presents himself and his beloved as canonized love-saints,
figures that the lovers of the future can pray to for guidance. LINES 40-44
This is a dramatic, reverent climax to a passionate poem—but Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
readers shouldn't forget that it's funny, too: Into the glasses of your eyes
(So made such mirrors, and such spies,
• Remember, this speaker is a seasoned, worldly, and That they did all to you epitomize)
rather self-deprecating middle-aged guy. He's Countries, towns, courts:
already proven he has his feet firmly on the
In the first lines of this stanza, the speaker began imagining the
ground—and that what he says about love, he says
prayers his followers might say as they "worship" at the temple
with clear eyes.
of this poem, invoking the speaker and his beloved as love's
• Readers thus get the sense that, when he describes
canonized saints. Now, at the climax of this prayer, he reaches
himself to his friend as an honest-to-God saint, he's
being deadly serious and ever-so-slightly tongue-in- for an ancient and beautiful metaphor that
cheek at exactly the same time. reflects—literally—the endless glory of love:

In fact, that wry sense of humor is a big part of what will make • The speaker and his lover, the imagined prayer goes
the poem's conclusion moving. Even an ordinary guy with "five on, look into each other's eyes and see mirrors.
• Here, readers might want to think about the last
gray hairs," "gout," and a "ruined fortune," the speaker
time they stood between two mirrors, and saw
suggests—a guy who's seen enough of the world to know that
reflections reflecting reflections, stretching on
love sinks no ships and stops no wars—can still reach divinity
forever. Gazing at each other with their matched
through loving well. Anyone could, and perhaps should, aspire
"mirrors," the lovers see the infinite.
to such heights.
• And in seeing the infinite in each other, they see the
So the speaker recommends a prayer to those who want to "whole world's soul": everything, themselves
follow in his and his beloved's footsteps—the people included, seems to live inside the beloved,
worshiping at this poem's metaphorical temple. Listen to the "epitomize[d]" in that reflection—a word that can
speaker's anaphor
anaphoraa as he describes how later lovers should mean both "summed up" and "shown at its absolute
"invoke" (that is, call upon) the happy pair: best."
• "Countries, towns, courts": the world entire is both
[...] You
ou, whom reverend love encompassed and glorified by those beloved,
Made one another's hermitage; mirroring eyes.
You
ou, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
And look how Donne says so:
Those solemn, repeated "you"s feel like a drumroll, a grand
lead-up to the poem's finale. Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of yyour
our eeyyes
And take a closer look at the way the speaker imagines his

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(So made such mirrors
mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to yyou
ou epitomize
epitomize) SYMBOLS
Countries, towns, courts [...]
THE PHOENIX
Here, the speaker:
While the speaker uses the phoenix as a metaphor in
this poem, not a symbol, it's important to know about
• describes the two lovers' eyes as "glasses" (or
traditional phoenix symbolism to understand what the poem is
mirrors
mirrors)—
doing with that metaphor.
• then, in an aside, calls their eyes "mirrors
mirrors" again—
• then, still in the aside, says those mirrored eyes The phoenix was a mythical bird, said to periodically catch fire,
contain everything in the world
world— burn to death, and then arise, reborn, from its own ashes. For
• then, returning to the original sentence, says that obvious reasons, then, the phoenix was a symbol for rebirth,
the "glasses" take in "countries, towns, courts"—that rejuvenation, and resurrection. In the Christian tradition, the
is, everything in the world
world! phoenix also symbolized Christ himself.
The speaker thus draws on phoenix symbolism to suggest that
In other words: this intricate sentence says everything twice. passionate love makes him and his lover both immortal and
That same-but-different repetition mirrors the metaphorical divine—and to make a daring joke. The two of them, he
mirrors the speaker is describing. observes, can burn up in the fires of passion, "die" (or have
Once again: this "well-wrought urn" of a poem doesn't just orgasms), and then get up again, good as new!
contain love, but reflects it: love is indeed "fit for verse" here, and
verse is fit for love. This is the poem's rhetorical zenith; readers Where this symbol appears in the poem:
might just about hear fireworks going off in the background.
• Lines 23-27: “The phoenix riddle hath more wit /
LINES 44-45 By us: we two being one, are it. / So, to one neutral thing
Beg from above both sexes fit. / We die and rise the same, and prove /
Mysterious by this love.”
A pattern of your love!
The final stanza has been an increasingly intense prayer to the
poem's "canonized," saintly lovers, culminating in an image of a
loving gaze that expands to embrace infinity. After that final POETIC DEVICES
grand flourish, only one thing remains: those who worship at
the temple of the speaker and his beloved, the poem concludes,
CONCEIT
will have to ask them to "beg from above / A pattern of your Like a lot of Donne's poems, "The Canonization" revolves
love!" In other words, they'll pray to be given the design this around a central conceit
conceit: an elaborate extended metaphor
metaphor.
love was built from, so they can love as passionately Here, in fact, there are two conceits: poetry as a monument,
themselves. and lovers as saints.
This is a distinctly theological conclusion. Note that the In the fourth stanza, the speaker notes that when lovers die,
imagined worshipers aren't asking the speaker and his beloved their love is rarely commemorated with a mighty "tomb" or a
to pony up the "pattern of [their] love" themselves. Instead, the "well-wrought urn." Leaving aside the speaker's naughty joke
worshipers ask the canonized lovers to intercede for them: to (to "die," in Renaissance slang, was to have an
carry their prayers to God, just as Christian saints are said to. orgasm—definitely the kind of event nobody builds a tomb
about), there's a serious point here:
The kind of love the speaker hymns in this poem, in other
words, isn't something that people make up all by themselves.
• Passionate love, in this speaker's eyes, is one of the
It's a divine gift, an act of grace. And it's all part of the miracle
greatest and most divine forces in the world, and
that such gifts aren't limited to the young, foolish, and beautiful.
lovers should be celebrated just as great heroes are.
Love, "The Canonization" suggests, is all the more divine
• But love, the speaker thinks, also needs a different
because it raises flawed and mortal beings—people all too
kind of monument than a dead hero. Instead of
aware of their "five gray hairs" and their general frailty—to the building a stony "urn" to commemorate his love, the
brink of heaven. An immortal poem is the only fitting speaker will therefore build a metaphorical temple
monument to such a love. out of poetry, making "pretty rooms" in "sonnets
sonnets."
(There's another pun implied here: the word
"stanza
stanza," meaning the groups of lines out of which
poems are built, actually means "room" in Italian.)

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This poem itself thus becomes a kind of "well-wrought urn," a of Renaissance candle symbolism
symbolism, suggesting that the lovers'
beautifully designed container that will preserve the speaker's passion burns like a flame—but also that it burns them up,
love. melting them away. In other words, there's no forgetting that
A monument like this poem, the speaker goes on, a poem that every time the two of them "die" in a sexual sense, they're also a
commemorates a love as deep as his, will itself become a temple few minutes closer to literal death. The pleasures of sex require
worthy of a holy pilgrimage. It might even have powers a a body—and bodies are mortal.
physical temple never could: a poem, after all, can travel the But the speaker also laughs in the face of death. Every time he
world and endlessly replicate in print, while a building, a tomb, and his lover "die" in bed, he observes, they "rise the
or an urn stays resolutely in one place. same"—that is, they can "die" sexually over and over and still get
If the speaker writes a poem as a monument to his love, then, up again. (There's also yet another sex joke in the idea that the
people everywhere will be able to visit that monument—and to speaker can "rise" after he "dies": in other words, with his lover,
worship there. In the poem's other major conceit, true lovers he's sexually inexhaustible.) The little death of passion, the
like the speaker and his beloved are "canonized" by their love: speaker insists, fuses him and his lover into one immortal
that is, they're made into Catholic saints. Love, this poem "phoenix," eternally reborn to more passion.
argues, has an awful lot in common with the Christian faith: And the fact that this pair can go through this punny "death"
over and over isn't just a joke. The speaker genuinely believes
• Love (and sex) makes "two" separate people into that the kind of passion he and his lover feel for each other is
"one"—in much the same way that God is said to immortal—or at least, it can be, if preserved through the
become part of every soul. metaphorical monument of a poem like this one. He explores
• Love can also make people immortal, allowing them that idea through a subtler pun. When he says that he and his
to "die" and resurrect like a phoenix—or like Christ lover will "build in sonnets pretty rooms," he's making a
himself. submerged pun on the word "stanza," which means "room" in
Italian. In other words: he and his lover might not be
Passion, the conceit of canonization suggests, is a near remembered with a physical shrine once they're dead, so this
neighbor to the divine. Far from being a sinful distraction, love poem will have to be their temple instead. The "pretty rooms"
can raise mortal beings to the brink of heaven. of poems like this one will immortalize their deathless passion.

Where Conceit appears in the poem: Where Pun appears in the poem:
• Lines 28-45: “We can die by it, if not live by love, / • Line 21: “We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,”
And if unfit for tombs and hearse / Our legend be, it will • Line 26: “We die and rise the same”
be fit for verse; / And if no piece of chronicle we • Line 28: “We can die by it, if not live by love,”
prove, / We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms; / • Line 32: “ 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
METAPHOR
invoke us: You, whom reverend love / Made one The poem's tapestry of metaphors helps the speaker to evoke
another's hermitage; / You, to whom love was peace, that his experience of love and to suggest that sexual passion isn't
now is rage; / Who did the whole world's soul sinful, but holy.
contract, and drove / Into the glasses of your eyes A long sequence of metaphors in lines 20-24 depict the speaker
/ (So made such mirrors, and such spies, / That and his lover as a number of animals and objects laden with
they did all to you epitomize) / Countries, towns, traditional Renaissance symbolism
symbolism:
courts: Beg from above / A pattern of your love!”
• Flies often appeared in art and poetry as symbols of
PUN death, sin, and lust: because they feed on dead
A lot of this poem's philosophy hinges on a single dirty pun
pun: to bodies, they were meant to remind people that
"die," in the Renaissance, didn't just mean to literally keel over, earthly, fleshly pleasures (including sex) were
but to have an orgasm. Returning to this pun over and over, fleeting.
looking at it from different angles, the poem's speaker makes it • "Tapers," or candles, were another symbol of lust
clear that death has no power over his love. and mortality: as candles burn (just like lovers
"burning with passion"), they get eaten up and
This pun first appears in line 21, when the speaker observes disappear.
that he and his lover are like "tapers," or candles: they "die" at • The "eagle" symbolized wisdom, insight, and power
their "own cost." Here, the speaker alludes to a common piece

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(and was the attribute of St. John the Evangelist, RHETORICAL QUESTION
known as the most keen-sighted and theological of
The speaker's rhetorical questions in lines 10-15 help to
the Gospel authors); the "dove" represented peace,
characterize him as a grounded, knowing person—and thus
love, and the Christian Holy Spirit itself.
make his declaration of faith in love that much more powerful.
• The "phoenix," finally, was a symbol of immortality: it
was a legendary bird said to burn to death, then be In this passage, the speaker repeatedly asks his mocking friend:
reborn from its own ashes. As an image of What harm did my love ever do to anyone? His love, he observes,
resurrection, it was often associated with Christ. hasn't "drowned" any ships, "overflowed" any fields,
"remove[d]" the spring from the countryside, or added even
Taken all together, these metaphors suggest that the speaker "one more" death to the plague's toll.
experiences love as something both fleshly and sacred. He and But these specific examples are pointed. Every ludicrous
his love are fated to "die" in more than one way: they're mortal possibility the speaker lists here alludes to a common trope in
beings, but they also "die" in bed together ("dying" was Renaissance love poetry: the ideas that lovestruck sighs can
Renaissance slang for "having an orgasm"). But their love also sink ships
ships, heartbroken tears can flood the world
world, rejection can
makes them more than flesh: it puts them in touch with the feel icy as winter
winter, and passion can burn lik
likee a fe
fevver are, shall we
immortal virtues of a whole host of sacred birds, and perhaps say, not too hard to find in the writings of Donne's
seems to give them wings, too. contemporaries.
Such a love as this, the poem suggests, needs a monument or a By rhetorically pointing out that his love isn't a force with real-
temple to honor it. In lines 37-38, the lovers themselves world destructive power, the speaker makes it clear that he's
become "one another's hermitage
hermitage": that is, each other's secret, not a delusional, self-centered, lovesick fool, so crazy in love
private places of worship. that he believes his passion shakes the whole world. That
But the speaker wants other people to be able to appreciate the realism only makes his eventual exploration of love's actual
holiness of his love, too, even long after he and his lover are power feel that much more persuasive. The rhetorical
dead and no one can visit those "hermitage[s]" anymore. That's questions here thus invite readers to take the speaker's passion
why he describes building "in sonnets pretty rooms
rooms" for his love as seriously—and as lightly—as he does.
to live in: in other words, poems just like this one become
metaphorical temples in which love can be preserved and Where Rhetorical Question appears in the poem:
worshiped. (That fits right in with the conceit of the lovers
themselves as "canonized" saints, too.) • Lines 10-15: “Alas, alas, who's injured by my love? /
What merchant's ships have my sighs drowned? /
The poem's final metaphor is an ancient, rich, and mysterious Who says my tears have overflowed his ground? /
one. In the last stanza, the lovers' eyes become "glasses," or When did my colds a forward spring remove? /
mirrors. As the two of them look at each other, in other words, When did the heats which my veins fill / Add one
their eyes reflect back and forth into infinity. Readers who have more to the plaguy bill?”
stood between two mirrors will be able to imagine this clearly.
These mirrored eyes thus seem to contain the whole universe: PARALLELISM
they make the lovers everything to each other. (Donne isn't the Par
arallelism
allelism gives emphasis and power to the speaker's witty
first person to play with the image of lovers' eyes as mirrors, or argument.
to see such loving reflections as sacred—see Par aradiso
adiso, the last
For example, listen to the way this device works in the first
book of Dante's Divine Comedy, for another famous example.)
stanza, in which the speaker tells his friend to get a hobby and
quit bugging him about his love affair, already:
Where Metaphor appears in the poem:
• Line 20: “ Call her one, me another fly,” Tak
akee yyou
ou a course, get yyou
ou a place,
• Line 21: “We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,” Observ
Observee His Honor, or His Grace,
• Line 22: “ And we in us find the eagle and the dove.”
• Lines 23-24: “The phoenix riddle hath more wit / Here, parallelism makes it sound as if the speaker is working up
By us: we two being one, are it.” a head of steam: this repetitive sentence structure, in which
• Line 32: “ We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;” each clause begins with a new command, could just go on and
• Lines 37-38: “You, whom reverend love / Made one on. This phrasing makes it sound like the speaker is saying, Do
another's hermitage” whatever the heck you like, just leave me alone.
• Line 41: “the glasses of your eyes”
That effect gets even more pronounced in the second stanza,
• Line 42: “So made such mirrors, and such spies,”
where the speaker uses parallelism to introduce a whole host of

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rhetorical questions
questions:
• Line 33: “As”
What merchant's ships have my sighs drowned? • Line 34: “as”
Who says my tears have overflowed his ground? • Line 37: “You”
When did my colds a forward spring remove? • Line 39: “You”
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill? REPETITION
Repetitions carry readers back again and again to the poem's
All these similarly phrased questions imply a further one: if my central ball of wax: "love." "Love" appears as the final word in
love hasn't done anyone any harm, then wh
whyy are you bothering me both the first and last line of every stanza—and thus frames the
about it? whole poem. This repetition fits in with the speaker's sense of
Parallelism also helps the speaker to drive home his point about love's divinity. "Love," in this poem, is the beginning and the
poetry: ending, the alpha and the omega: in other words, it's just what
God is said to be. A fervently religious man, this speaker clearly
And if unfit for tombs and hearse believes that if God is love (as Christianity holds), then intense
Our legend be, it will be fit for vverse
erse; sexual passion must be pretty close to godliness.
The speaker also uses repetitions for emphasis and flair. Take a
Here, the speaker uses repetitive phrasing to introduce the look at the epizeuxis in line 10, for instance:
idea that poetry is the ideal, most befit
fitting monument to dead
lovers. (A stony "tomb" can't preserve the experience of Alas
Alas, alas
alas, who's injured by my love?
passionate love, but a poem like this one sure can.)
And anaphor
anaphoraa plays an important role in the prayers the This strong repetition almost makes it sound as if the speaker is
speaker imagines later readers offering at the shrine to love teasing his friend from the first stanza right back. A full-
this poem will become: blooded "Alas, alas" feels hyperbolic in this context: it's more
like something you'd say when, for instance, your ship went
And thus invoke us: You
ou, whom reverend love down than when your friend made a little fun of you. Readers
Made one another's hermitage; might even imagine the speaker putting on a sly, mocking voice
You
ou, to whom love was peace, that now is rage; here.
Meanwhile, back in the first stanza, the speaker uses a moment
Those initial "You"s sound reverent and solemn, as if the of chiasmus to tell his friend to get a hobby:
imagined visitors are invoking sacred spirits. And that's just the
point the speaker is making: he and his lover share a passion so With wealth your state, yyour
our mind with arts improve,
deep that it should be treated as something holy, not as a
matter for mockery (as his teasing friend in the first stanza This elegant inversion turns the line inside out—and makes the
seems to think). speaker sound completely in control of this situation. He's not
just a dreamy lover, this moment suggests, but a rhetorician at
Where P
Par
arallelism
allelism appears in the poem: the height of his powers.
• Line 2: “Or,” “or” And in the fourth stanza, the speaker uses polyptoton to make
• Line 3: “My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune,” an emphatic point about the relation between love and poetry:
• Lines 5-8: “Take you a course, get you a place, /
Observe His Honor, or His Grace, / Or the King's real, or And if unfit for tombs and hearse
his stampèd face / Contemplate” Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
• Lines 11-15: “What merchant's ships have my sighs
drowned? / Who says my tears have overflowed his This altered repetition makes it clear that the speaker sees
ground? / When did my colds a forward spring poems like this one, not as a consolation prize for lovers
remove? / When did the heats which my veins fill / unmemorialized in statues and "tombs," but as the exact right
Add one more to the plaguy bill?” monument to great loves.
• Line 19: “Call”
• Line 20: “Call”
Where Repetition appears in the poem:
• Line 29: “unfit for tombs and hearse”
• Line 30: “fit for verse” • Line 1: “love”

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• Line 4: “With wealth your state, your mind with arts” • Lines 11-15: “What merchant's ships have my sighs
• Line 9: “love” drowned? / Who says my tears have overflowed his
• Line 10: “Alas, alas,,” “love” ground? / When did my colds a forward spring
• Line 18: “love” remove? / When did the heats which my veins fill /
• Line 19: “love” Add one more to the plaguy bill?”
• Line 27: “love” • Lines 20-22: “Call her one, me another fly, / We're tapers
• Line 28: “love” too, and at our own cost die, / And we in us find the
• Line 29: “unfit” eagle and the dove.”
• Line 30: “fit” • Line 23: “The phoenix riddle”
• Line 33: “well,” “well”
• Line 36: “love” ENJAMBMENT
• Line 37: “love” Enjambments help to give the poem energy and
• Line 45: “love”
momentum—and structure some of Donne's notoriously
intricate sentences.
ALLUSION
The simpler enjambments here merely do what enjambments
The poem's allusions poke some fun at the world's often do: they pick up the poem's pace, making one line flow
misconceptions about love—and help the speaker to explore smoothly into the next. The end of the third stanza provides
what love is really like. one good example. After describing himself and his lover
There's a whole sequence of veiled, satirical allusions to forming a hybrid phoenix-like being during sex, the speaker
Renaissance love poetry in the rhetorical questions that take concludes:
up lines 10-15. Everything the speaker says love can't do in this
passage—sink ships, flood fields, cause unseasonable frosts, kill We die and rise the same, and pro
provve
people like a fever—is something that other poems of the era Mysterious by this love.
say love absolutely can do
do. Love, these mocking allusions
suggest, is powerful, but not in quite the way it's cracked up to Here, the enjambment makes these two lines feel like one
be. To this speaker, love only transforms the world from the sinuous piece. (There's a similar effect at the end of the
inside out: it changes lovers, intimately, but it doesn't launch an
anyy remaining two stanzas as well.)
ships on its own. But Donne also uses enjambments in trickier ways. Take a look
But the speaker also alludes to a bunch of inherited at what happens in lines 6-8, for instance:
Renaissance symbolism when he describes what love does feel
like to him in lines 20-23. Love makes him and his lover into a Observe His Honor, or His Grace,
pair of "fl[ies]," an "eagle" and a "dove," melting "tapers" (or Or the King's real, or his stampèd face
candles), and a "phoenix," a mythic bird that burns up and then Contemplate
Contemplate; what you will, approve,
resurrects. These images all touch on passion, mortality, and
the sacred; there's a deeper dive on their meaning under An enjambment here pulls this sentence in two directions:
"Metaphor" above.
What's broadly important here is that all of these allusions • On a first scan, readers are likely to imagine that the
suggest that some of the things people often say about love are verb "observe" also applies to the "King's real, or his
stampèd face": in other words, "His Honor," "His
quite right. Just as traditional symbolism would have it, these
Grace," and the King's various faces are all things
lines say, physical passion needs mortal bodies—bodies that will
meant to be observed.
die. But sexual "dying" (that is, having an orgasm, in
• But as it turns out, lines 7-8 are enjambed, and the
Renaissance terms) also seems to put the speaker and his lover
verb "contemplate" is actually meant to conclude
in touch with immortality: like the phoenix, they're still alive
the line about the King's face. That is: one should
after they "die," and their passion promises to outlive them in observe "His Honor, or His Grace," but contemplate
the form of a poem. the King.
The poem's allusions thus make a case for what love is, and
what it isn't. To this speaker, love is too great and sacred to This enjambment thus creates a surprise chiasmus
chiasmus, putting a
diminish it with outlandish cliché
cliché. verb at both the beginning and the end of this passage. Such
elegant, knotty phrasing helps the speaker to demonstrate that,
Where Allusion appears in the poem: whatever love has done to him, it's had no effect at all on his

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intellect or his eloquence. This enjambment is a spur to ASSONANCE
readers: it's as if the speaker is saying, keep up! Stay on your toes! Assonance
Assonance, like alliter
alliteration
ation, gives the poem music.
For example, listen to the sounds in this line from the poem's
Where Enjambment appears in the poem:
climax
climax:
• Lines 7-8: “face / Contemplate”
• Lines 14-15: “fill / Add” Who did the who
ole world's sou
oul contract [...]
• Lines 16-17: “still / Litigious”
• Lines 23-24: “wit / By” That long /oh/ feels as round as the "whole world" itself, and
• Lines 26-27: “prove / Mysterious” that big sound helps to give this moment its grandeur.
• Lines 29-30: “hearse / Our”
Meanwhile, back in line 26, assonance draws attention to an
• Lines 33-34: “becomes / The”
image that's at once beautiful and mischievous. Like the
• Lines 35-36: “approve / Us”
phoenix, the speaker says, he and his lover "die
ie and riise"—in
• Lines 37-38: “love / Made”
bed. This punn
punnyy joke, which plays on Renaissance slang for
• Lines 40-41: “drove / Into”
orgasms, feels all the more pointed because of that drawn-out
• Lines 44-45: “above / A”
/eye/ sound.

ALLITERATION
Where Assonance appears in the poem:
Alliter
Alliteration
ation gives the speaker's voice notes of gentle music even
in his pricklier moments. • Line 1: “tongue,” “love”
• Line 2: “chide”
For instance, a touch of /l/ alliteration both opens and closes
• Line 3: “five”
the first stanza as the speaker demands (and demands again) • Line 4: “state”
that his mocking friend "llet [him] love." That liquid /l/ sound is a • Line 5: “Take,” “place”
favorite in a lot of love poetry—and not just because it starts • Line 11: “my sighs”
the word "llove" itself. The drawn-out, gentle /l/ just plain feels • Line 16: “wars,” “lawyers”
luxurious and languorous to read aloud. By turning from the • Line 19: “such,” “love”
explosive "for God's sake hold your tongue" to the smooth "and • Line 22: “we,” “eagle”
let me love," the speaker makes it clear that he's rejecting his • Line 23: “phoenix”
friend's cynicism in the name of delicious passion. • Line 26: “die,” “rise”
Another moment of alliteration in line 3 suggests that the • Line 28: “live”
speaker feels rather irritated by his friend's • Line 29: “if,” “unfit”
incomprehension—but that he can give as good as he takes. So • Line 34: “ashes, as half”
long as his friend "let[s him] love," he says, no other kind of • Line 37: “You, whom”
mockery makes the slightest bit of difference to him: • Line 39: “You, to whom”
• Line 40: “whole,” “soul”
My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune, flout,

That fricative /f/ sound sounds like a spitting cat. Even as the VOCABULARY
speaker makes some jokes at his own expense, admitting that
he's not as young or as rich as he used to be, his defiant Hold your tongue (Line 1) - Shut up, be quiet.
alliteration makes it clear that he doesn't care one bit about any Chide my palsy, or my gout (Line 2) - That is, "Make fun of my
of those things: love is at the center of his world now. shaky hands or my creaky joints."
Flout (Line 3) - Mock, make fun of.
Where Alliter
Alliteration
ation appears in the poem:
State (Line 4) - Situation, circumstances.
• Line 1: “let,” “love”
Arts (Line 4) - Skills, crafts, new kinds of expertise.
• Line 3: “five,” “fortune,” “flout”
• Line 9: “let,” “love” Take you a course (Line 5) - Choose a career.
• Line 19: “what,” “will, we” Get you a place (Line 5) - Find yourself a position in the court
• Line 21: “tapers too” of a nobleman.
• Line 28: “live,” “love”
His stampèd face (Line 7) - In other words, coins with the
King's face printed on them.

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What you will, approve (Line 8) - In other words, "Try speaker's poem might pray to be given the model his love was
whatever you want." built on, so they can imitate this love themselves.
A forward spring (Line 13) - An early, warm springtime.
The plaguy bill (Line 15) - The weekly death register that FORM, METER, & RHYME
recorded the number of plague victims.
Litigious men (Line 17) - Men who are quick to sue each other FORM
Quarrels (Line 17) - Fights, disputes. Here, the word "The Canonization," like a lot of John Donne's poems, uses a
specifically suggests lawsuits. brand-new form of Donne's own invention. The poem is built
from five nine-line stanzas, and all those stanzas have
What you will (Line 19) - Whatever you want.
something in common: their first and last lines end with the
Fly (Line 20) - Flies were common Renaissance-era symbols of word "love." The poem, like the speaker, thus returns and
both mortality and lust. returns to the same preoccupation.
Tapers (Line 21) - Candles. No matter how much people tease the speaker for his late-in-
Die (Line 21, Line 26, Line 28) - All through this poem, Donne life love affair, this form suggests, he's unruffled. While he's old
puns on the word "die": it can mean both "to literally die," and and wise enough to know that passion can't really have much
"to have an orgasm." effect on ships (no matter what Christopher Marlowe sa says
ys), he
The eagle and the dove (Line 22) - Symbols of courage and also believes that, memorialized in verse, love has immortal
wisdom or gentleness and sweetness, respectively. power. This very poem is the proof.

The phoenix riddle (Line 23) - That is, the story of the phoenix, METER
the legendary bird said to burn to ashes and then come back to This poem's fluid, tricksy meter shifts its shape line by line but
life. repeats stanza by stanza. In other words, while each stanza is
Hath (Line 23) - Has. built from many different kinds of lines, those lines always fall in
Neutral (Line 25) - Androgynous, having both male and female roughly the same pattern.
features. While most of the lines here are iambic
iambic—that is, they're built
Unfit (Line 29) - Inappropriate. from iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM
DUM rhythm—they switch
between pentameter (five iambs per line), tetrameter (four
If no piece of chronicle we prove (Line 31) - In other words, "If iambs per line), and trimeter (three iambs per line). Here's an
we don't end up making it into the history books." example from the first three lines:
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms (Line 32) - Here, Donne is
making a quiet pun
pun: the word stanza is Italian for "room," as well For God's | sake hold | your tonguetongue, | and let | me
as meaning "a chunk of a poem." So the stanzas a sonnet is built lo
lovve,
from will be "rooms" for the speaker and his lover to live in. Or chide | my pal pal- | sy, or | my gout
gout,
Well-wrought urn (Line 33) - A beautifully-made funerary urn, My fiv
fivee | gray hairs
hairs, | or ru
ru- | ined for
for- | tune, flout
flout,
meant to contain the ashes of a cremated body.
Here, the meter moves from pentameter to tetrameter and
Canonized (Line 36) - Officially declared to be saints.
back again. The last line of each stanza, meanwhile, is always in
Invoke (Line 37) - Call on in prayer. iambic trimeter, as in line 18:
Reverend (Line 37) - Holy, honorable, revered.
Though she | and I | do lo
lovve.
Hermitage (Line 38) - A private chapel where a hermit, a
solitary holy man, would pray.
Those shorter lines add extra punch to the speaker's repeated
Rage (Line 39) - Intense passion—here, spiritual passion, reflections on love.
though sexual passion is also implied!
A lot of iambic poetry throws in some different rhythms for
Contract (Line 40) - Shrink down, concentrate into a small flavor, and this poem is no exception: the speaker has a few
place. tricks up his sleeve. For example, readers might hear a spondee
Glasses (Line 41) - Mirrors. (DUM
DUM-DUM DUM) on the second foot of line 1 ("sak
sakee hold
hold"), adding
Epitomize (Line 43) - Here, this word might mean both "to sum some forceful oomph to the speaker's demand that his listener
something up" and "to be the best example of something." be quiet. And listen to the hammering rhythm of line 5:

A pattern of your love (Line 45) - That is, people reading the Tak
akee you | a course
course, | get you | a place
place,

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The first and third feet of this tetrameter line aren't iambs, but When the speaker tells the scornful person he's talking to at
trochees
trochees, the opposite foot, with a DUM
DUM-da rhythm. Those up- the beginning of the poem to "get you a place" at some
front stresses mirror the speaker's exasperation with his nobleman's court, for instance, it's a very 17th-century way of
disapproving friend. saying "jeez, get a hobby." Many upper-class people at the time
Overall, the poem's meter feels flexible, playful, and musical. kept themselves busy by joining the retinues of the nobility,
The combination of shifting lines and steady stanzas might keeping great lords and ladies company in return for social
mimic the speaker's own situation: love, to him, feels both as connections and opportunities.
constant and as ever-changing as a flaming phoenix. The poem also uses a lot of classic 17th-century metaphors
metaphors,
like presenting the speaker and his lover as "flies" and melting
RHYME SCHEME "tapers" (or candles)—both traditional images of passion, lust,
Each nine-line stanza of "The Canonization" uses the same and death.
intricate rh
rhyme
yme scheme
scheme: And, generally speaking, mocking and praising love and lovers
ABBACCCAA were popular Renaissance pastimes, as Donne (and his
What's more, one of those rhymes is always the same across contempor
contemporaries
aries) observed in man
manyy other poems of the era.
the poem: the first and last rhymes of each stanza are identical,
repeating the word "love." The poem's rhymes thus keep on
carrying the reader back to the main thing on the speaker's CONTEXT
mind.
LITERARY CONTEXT
The movement of rhymes in the first four lines of each stanza
John Donne (1572-1631) is remembered as one of the
feels pretty familiar: Italian sonnets
sonnets, for instance, always start
foremost of the "metaphysical poets"—though he never called
with ABBA rhymes. (ThisThis Donne sonnet is a good example!) But
himself one. The later writer Samuel Johnson coined the term,
those surprising, forceful C-rhyme triplets (like
using it to describe a set of 17th-century English writers who
"place"/"Grace"/"face" in lines 5-7) give the second part of each
wrote witty, passionate, intricate, cerebral poetry about love
stanza a gathering momentum—and sometimes a hint either of
and God; George Herbert
Herbert, Andrew Marv
Marvell
ell, and Thomas
irritation or of rapturous fascination.
Traherne were some others.
Note that, to modern readers, many of the rhymes here sound
Donne was the prototypical metaphysical poet: a master of
slant
slant—"prove" and "love" in lines 26-27, for instance. In Donne's
elaborate conceits and complex sentences and a great writer of
17th-century London accent, however, those rhymes would
love poems (like this one) that mingle images of holiness with
likely have felt a lot closer to perfect
perfect!
filthy puns
puns. But during his lifetime, he was mostly a poet in
private. In public life, he was an important clergyman, rising to
SPEAKER become Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Like the vast
majority of his poetry, "The Canonization" didn't appear in print
The poem's speaker is a lover—and, notably, not a young lover. until several years after his death in 1633, when his collection
With his "five gray hairs" and his "gout," he sounds like he's well Poems was posthumously published.
into middle age. Perhaps that's why the teasing friend he Donne's mixture of cynicism, passion, and mysticism fell out of
shouts down at the beginning of the poem is giving him such a literary favor after his 17th-century heyday; Johnson, for
hard time: passionate, head-over-heels love is often considered instance, a leading figure of the 18th-century Enlightenment,
the purview of the yyoung
oung. This speaker doesn't care, though: to did not mean "metaphysical poet" as a compliment, seeing
him, a love like the one he's experiencing is timeless, deathless Donne and his contemporaries as obscure and irrational. But
as a phoenix. 19th-century Romantic poets like Samuel T Taaylor Coleridge
Like the speaker in many of Donne's poems, this lover seems to were stirred by Donne's mixture of philosophy and emotion,
have a lot in common with Donne himself. His brilliant wit, his and their enthusiasm slowly resurrected Donne's reputation.
passion, and his fondness for a dirty pun are all the poet's own. Donne is now remembered as one of the most powerful and
influential of poets, and he's inspired later writers from T.S.
Eliot to Yeats to A.S. Byatt.
SETTING
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
There's no clear setting in this poem: it all takes place in the This poem's witty reference to a passionate
speaker's mind and heart. But some clues help readers to "canonization"—that is, the official process by which someone
understand that the poem comes from John Donne's own becomes a saint in the Catholic church—plays on a major
17th-century English world. religious conflict in Donne's time. Donne was born during an

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era in which Protestantism had become the official state • The Metaph
Metaphysical
ysical P
Poets
oets — Learn more about Donne's role
religion of Britain. English Catholics were often persecuted and as one of the foremost "metaphysical poets."
killed. Donne himself was born into a Catholic family; his own (https:/
(https://www
/www.bl.uk/shak
.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/john-donne-and-
espeare/articles/john-donne-and-
brother went to prison for hiding a priest in his home. (The metaph
metaphysical-poetry)
ysical-poetry)
priest, not so fortunate, was tortured and executed.) • Donne
Donne's's P
Portr
ortrait
ait — Take a look at a famous portrait of
All this violence emerged from the schism between English Donne. Donne is intentionally playing the part of the
Catholics and Protestants that began during the reign of Henry melancholy, elegant lover here! (https:/
(https://www
/www.npg.org.uk/
.npg.org.uk/
VIII, who died about 30 years before Donne was born. Wishing collections/search/portr
collections/search/portrait/m
ait/mw111844/John-Donne
w111844/John-Donne))
to divorce his first wife and marry a second—unacceptable
under Catholicism—Henry split from the Pope and founded his LITCHARTS ON OTHER JOHN DONNE POEMS
own national Church of England (also known as the Anglican • AVValediction:
alediction: F
Forbidding
orbidding Mourning
church). This break led to generations of conflict and bloodshed • Batter My Heart, Three-P
Three-Person
erson''d God (Holy Sonnet 14)
between Anglican Protestants and Catholic loyalists. • Death, be not proud
• No Man Is an Island
Donne himself would eventually renounce Catholicism in order
• Song: Go and catch a falling star
to become an important Anglican clergyman under the
• The Flea
patronage of King James I. While his surviving sermons suggest • The Good-Morrow
he had a sincere change of heart about his religion, his use of • The Sun Rising
Catholic language hints that he didn't altogether abandon the • The T
Triple
riple F
Fool
ool
beliefs of his youth. • To His Mistress Going to Bed

MORE RESOUR
RESOURCES
CES HOW T
TO
O CITE
EXTERNAL RESOURCES
MLA
• The P
Poem
oem Aloud — Listen to a lively performance of the
poem. (https:/
(https:///youtu.be/4Psjq4TXrwc) Nelson, Kristin. "The Canonization." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 22
Dec 2021. Web. 6 Jan 2022.
• A Short Biogr
Biograph
aphyy — Learn more about Donne's life and
work at the British Library's website. (https:/
(https://www
/www.bl.uk/
.bl.uk/ CHICAGO MANUAL
people/john-donne
people/john-donne)) Nelson, Kristin. "The Canonization." LitCharts LLC, December 22,
2021. Retrieved January 6, 2022. https://www.litcharts.com/
• Poems (1633) — See images of the posthumous collection
poetry/john-donne/the-canonization.
in which this poem was first published. (https:/
(https://www
/www.bl.uk/
.bl.uk/
collection-items/first-edition-of-john-donnes-
poems-1633)

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