The

Canonization
John Donne
What’s it going to
be?
 Background

"The Canonization" was published in 1633—two years after

Donne’s death—in the first edition of his book Songs and Sonnets.
It is not a story about a gun, nor a story about a camera. It is about
a couple that loves each other so deeply that they become
- canonized. In other words, the couple gains holy sainthood
thanks to their wordily love.
 Canonization (in American
English and Oxford spelling)
or canonisation (in majority British
English) is the act by which
the Catholic Church or Eastern
Orthodox Church declares a deceased
person to be a saint, upon which
declaration the person is included in
the canon, or list, of recognized
saints.
Meaning of the Title
Despite what it sounds like, "The Canonization" is not a violent poem, no canons are
fired during the course of this poem. In fact, Donne has a very different idea of
"canon" in mind altogether. In this case, canonization refers to the process by which a
holy figure becomes elevated by religious officials to the formal position of saint.

The speaker of "The Canonization" is not going to let a little thing like death get in his
way, not when he has the power of fantasy in his hands.
The fourth and fifth stanzas construct an elaborate, metaphorical scenario by
which the speaker and his lover a) die, b) become immortalized in poetry, c) are
made saints by those who read these poems, and then d) receive prayers from the
poor people left back on Earth who aren't capable of loving anywhere near as well
as they are.
Do you want to be a
love-saint? 
 Religion

This poem has three

of the main
characteristics

Co
the typical Donne

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e poetry!

ce
v
Lo

it
• The poem captures an essence of his own feelings.

• John Donne was born in London in 1572. In 1601 he secretly married Lady Egerton’s
niece, 17-year-old Anne Moore and was thrown into fleet prison. The obvious controversy
of this marriage is evident in “The Canonization.”
. 
• They tell others to not criticize them for their love but for other shortcomings in their
lives. They continue by stating that their love has never hurt anyone or anything and tell
them to feel however they feel about it because their love will never destroyed. In the end
their love will be a legend for future generations to follow.

• The rhyme scheme in each stanza is ABBACCCDD.

 • The first line sets the tone for the rest of
the poem and introduces to the poems
For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love;
subject matter: love.
  Or chide my palsy, or my gout;
• The speaker continues on stating to his
  My five grey hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout;
friend that he should be more concerned
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve; with his own life. He suggests furthering . 
his education, finding religion,
  Take you a course, get you a place,
entertaining himself with the affairs of the
  Observe his Honour, or his Grace; kingdom or money. 
Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face
• He tells his friend find anything that
  Contemplate; what you will, approve, interests you to distract you from my love
life so that he might love in peace.
  So you will let me love
Alas, alas, who's injured by my love?
What merchant's ships have my sighs drowned?
Who says my tears have overflowed his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
                Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
         Litigious men, which quarrels move,
         Though she and I do love.
• The couple does not disturb the world.
• Nobody is injured by their love
• The lovers are not making war, fighting
lawsuits, interfering with commerce, or
. 
spreading disease.
• Neither his coldness nor his heat has
affected the environment.
• His tears or his sighs has disturbed
nothing.

Call us what you will, we are made such by love;
    Call her one, me another fly,
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
     And we in us find the eagle and the dove.
          The phœnix riddle hath more wit
    By us; we two being one, are it.
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
         We die and rise the same, and prove
         Mysterious by this love.
 They do not mind even if they are
called flies
 They will die at each others cost
 They will become the eagle and the
dove
 Or the phoenix who is eternal and . 
takes its rebirth from the ashes it
burns too.
 It is love that will resurrect them.
First the speaker compares himself and his beloved to
the eagle and dove, a reference to the Renaissance
idea in which the eagle flies in the sky above the earth
while the dove transcends the skies to reach heaven.
He immediately shifts to the image of the Phoenix,
another death-by-fire symbol (the Phoenix is a bird
that repeatedly burns in fire and comes back to life
out of the ashes), suggesting that even though their
flames of passion will consume them, the poet and his
beloved will be reborn from the ashes of their love.
The couple may destroy themselves in the act of
burning with passion for one another, yet by the
middle of the poem, First the speaker compares
himself and his beloved to the eagle and dove, a
reference to the Renaissance idea in which the
eagle flies in the sky above the earth while the
dove transcends the skies to reach heaven.
 He immediately shifts to the image of the
Phoenix, another death-by-fire symbol (the
Phoenix is a bird that repeatedly burns in fire and
comes back to life out of the ashes, suggesting
that even though their flames of passion will
consume them, the poet and his beloved will be
reborn from the ashes of their love.
We can die by it, if not live by love,
         And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
         And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
                We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
                As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
         And by these hymns, all shall approve
         Us canonized for Love.
• Even the best wrought urn is a
subject to destruction.
• They may not get the honour of a
gorgeous tomb but they will
remain eternal through the sonnet. . 
The song will keep them alive and
make them canonized.
• They will love in and for love they
will live for it too.
And thus invoke us: "You, whom
reverend love
         Made one another's hermitage;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is
rage;
         Who did the whole world's soul
contract, and drove
         Into the glasses of your eyes
         (So made such mirrors, and such
spies,
That they did all to you epitomize)
         Countries, towns, courts: beg from
above
         A pattern of your love!"
 The final stanza voices the
speaker’s sense of future
vindication over the critic.
 The speaker expects that the rest of
the world will “invoke” himself
and his beloved, similar to the way. 
Catholics invoke saints in their
prayers.
 In this vision of the future, the
lovers’ legend has grown, and they
have reached a kind of sainthood.
He says that they can die by love if they are not able to live by it, and
if their legend is not fit “for tombs and hearse,” it will be fit for
poetry, and “We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms.”
A well-wrought urn does as much justice to a dead man’s ashes as
does a gigantic tomb; and by the same token, the poems about the
speaker and his lover will cause them to be “canonized,” admitted to
the sainthood of love.
 All those who hear their story will invoke the lovers, saying that
countries, towns, and courts “beg from above / A pattern of your
love!”
They are role models for all the world, because “Countries, towns,
courts beg from above/A pattern of your love”.
From the lovers’ perspective, the whole world is present as they
look into each other’s eyes; this sets the pattern of love that the
world can follow.
 Setting
The first setting is just a conversation between the speaker and someone. We never learn
to whom he is talking, only that this person must be annoying because the speaker starts off
in an exasperated tone: "For God's sake hold your tongue" (1). This setting also has the
added effect of allowing the speaker to address us as the readers, just as he is addressing
this other person.
Things would all be pretty straightforward if the speaker stopped there, but he doesn't. He
moves on to describe several settings for his relationship with his lover. In stanza 2, for
example, he describes the earthly setting, in which nobody around him is (or should be)
particularly troubled by the couple's love, and life goes on.
In the third stanza, we move into a more abstract, more metaphorical setting, as the
speaker likens himself and his lover to a series of symbolic birds.
 Relationship Status ------ It’s Complicated

There are three elements that identify a John Donne poem: God,
love, and, cleverness. Most of his poetry has at least two of these
aspects, though many, like "The Canonization," have all three. The
religious and romantic aspects of his work are pretty easy to spot,
but his cleverness takes a keener eye. It also frequently takes the
form of a poetic technique called a conceit, which is a kind of
extended metaphor that brings together seemingly-unrelated
elements, like saints' eyes, the entire world, and a pair of mirrors.
 Questions To Ponder

1. Are you annoyed by the speaker's love or jealous of it? What parts of
the poem influence your reaction to him?
2. Why do we not ever hear from the speaker's beloved in this poem?
What do you think she might have to say?
3. What reasons does the speaker give for his and his beloved's
canonization?
4. In what ways does the poem equate romantic love with religious piety?
5. Why does the speaker turn to literature as a way to preserve the lovers'
legacy?
6. What does this poem say about the importance of literature in society?
What parts of the poem do support your ideas?