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The Canonization
The famous poem The Canonization by John Donne.
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About the author
John Donne
888 books706 followersJohn Donne was an English poet, preacher and a major representative of the metaphysical poets of the period. His works are notable for their realistic and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially as compared to that of his contemporaries.
Despite his great education and poetic talents, he lived in poverty for several years, relying heavily on wealthy friends. In 1615 he became an Anglican priest and, in 1621, was appointed the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London.
Despite his great education and poetic talents, he lived in poverty for several years, relying heavily on wealthy friends. In 1615 he became an Anglican priest and, in 1621, was appointed the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 11, 2016
“The Canonization” is one of my favorite poem by John Donne (he is one of my favorite poets as well). The very first line of this poem captures the reader's attention.
There is something in this poem that makes me read it again and again. I love the way how Donne commands people to just keep their mouth shut and tongue intact so that he can continue loving his beloved without any interruption. Indirectly, he wants the world to go to hell and people to stop poking their nose into his business and continue on their own and to let him, to continue with whatever he is doing. Because he says his love hasn’t and will never harm anyone. This metaphysical way of expression by Donne has made me a BIG fan of his poetry.
There is something in this poem that makes me read it again and again. I love the way how Donne commands people to just keep their mouth shut and tongue intact so that he can continue loving his beloved without any interruption. Indirectly, he wants the world to go to hell and people to stop poking their nose into his business and continue on their own and to let him, to continue with whatever he is doing. Because he says his love hasn’t and will never harm anyone. This metaphysical way of expression by Donne has made me a BIG fan of his poetry.
July 19, 2022
This is one of the finest known poems of Donne. It is a love poem expressing Donne’s optimistic approach towards love, an outlook of approval and amalgamation in a love-relationship.
Critics have taken it to be an expression of the poet’s love for Anne-Moore, whom he loved fervently and keenly, and the elopement and ensuing marriage with who bust his fortunes. But nothing can be affirmed with any conviction in this respect.
The poem is based upon a contradiction. Its very title is contradictory. The intelligent inconsistency which triggers the poem is this that the poet audaciously treats ‘blasphemous love’ as if it were ‘celestial love’. Love of women is an irreverent activity denounced by the church.
The lovers have neither relinquished the world nor the delights of the flesh. They coddle in the joys of sexual congress and are yet called ‘saints’.
But the poet ingeniously argues his case, and succeeds in instituting that dedicated lovers, like the poet and his beloved, are saints, though they are saints of love. They have rejected the world for each other, and the body of each is a hermitage for the other. They are as true to each other as a saint is to God and therefore they may accurately be called ‘saints of love’.
Thus a physical association is treated like the pious association of a devotee with his God, and consequently some critics have taken the poem to be a caricature of Christian sainthood. But if it is at all a burlesque, it is a strongly solemn burlesque.
The poem begins unexpectedly and colloquially in the typical manner of Donne, the rationale being to amaze and shock the readers, and in this way to capture their attention.
For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout,
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve……..
The poet tells the above his worldly-wise friend who tries to dissuade him from love making. Such is the emotional situation and the poet proceeds to give arguments after arguments in support of his point of view.
**Love-making is as normal to him, as physical failing and ailment is to an old man, and consequently no point would be served by chastising him for it.
**The friend should mind his own business rather than trying to impede with his contentment. He may do what he likes, the poet will not mind as long as he permits him to continue with his love-making uninterrupted.
** The poet says that his love-making is a guiltless action. It does not cause any impairment to any one. His sighs do not cause tempests and capsize any ship, his tears do not cause any deluges, his chills do not influence the weather, and the heat of his ardour does not cause plague. All human and natural action goes on routinely, untouched. Then why should anyone frown upon his lovemaking.
**Thereafter he says that their love is apposite and all-engrossing. They are two bodies and one soul. Such a love may be disparaging, but it obliterates themselves alone and none else.
They may, “die” by their love, but after their death it would be realised that their love was a holy passion, a religious passion, and they would be regarded as saints of love: All shall approve us canonized for love.
The story of their love may not be recorded in books of history, and big monuments may not be built in their honour, but they would be remembered by poets who would write lyrics and sonnets to the glory of their love. When the people would hear these songs, they would regard them as hymns to the martyred apostles of love.
They would then appeal to them and ask them to implore to God on their behalf, to send them a blueprint of their love. In times to come their love would be deemed as a replica by all lovers who would desire the same devotion from the objects of their love.
The poem has all the distinguishing qualities of Donne’s poetry: the hasty, theatrical opening and Donne’s exercise of conceits, Donne’s humorousness, and his use of overstatement and so on.
The poem, in a nutshell, handsomely deserves the praises that have been unanimously awarded to it.
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!"
Critics have taken it to be an expression of the poet’s love for Anne-Moore, whom he loved fervently and keenly, and the elopement and ensuing marriage with who bust his fortunes. But nothing can be affirmed with any conviction in this respect.
The poem is based upon a contradiction. Its very title is contradictory. The intelligent inconsistency which triggers the poem is this that the poet audaciously treats ‘blasphemous love’ as if it were ‘celestial love’. Love of women is an irreverent activity denounced by the church.
The lovers have neither relinquished the world nor the delights of the flesh. They coddle in the joys of sexual congress and are yet called ‘saints’.
But the poet ingeniously argues his case, and succeeds in instituting that dedicated lovers, like the poet and his beloved, are saints, though they are saints of love. They have rejected the world for each other, and the body of each is a hermitage for the other. They are as true to each other as a saint is to God and therefore they may accurately be called ‘saints of love’.
Thus a physical association is treated like the pious association of a devotee with his God, and consequently some critics have taken the poem to be a caricature of Christian sainthood. But if it is at all a burlesque, it is a strongly solemn burlesque.
The poem begins unexpectedly and colloquially in the typical manner of Donne, the rationale being to amaze and shock the readers, and in this way to capture their attention.
For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout,
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve……..
The poet tells the above his worldly-wise friend who tries to dissuade him from love making. Such is the emotional situation and the poet proceeds to give arguments after arguments in support of his point of view.
**Love-making is as normal to him, as physical failing and ailment is to an old man, and consequently no point would be served by chastising him for it.
**The friend should mind his own business rather than trying to impede with his contentment. He may do what he likes, the poet will not mind as long as he permits him to continue with his love-making uninterrupted.
** The poet says that his love-making is a guiltless action. It does not cause any impairment to any one. His sighs do not cause tempests and capsize any ship, his tears do not cause any deluges, his chills do not influence the weather, and the heat of his ardour does not cause plague. All human and natural action goes on routinely, untouched. Then why should anyone frown upon his lovemaking.
**Thereafter he says that their love is apposite and all-engrossing. They are two bodies and one soul. Such a love may be disparaging, but it obliterates themselves alone and none else.
They may, “die” by their love, but after their death it would be realised that their love was a holy passion, a religious passion, and they would be regarded as saints of love: All shall approve us canonized for love.
The story of their love may not be recorded in books of history, and big monuments may not be built in their honour, but they would be remembered by poets who would write lyrics and sonnets to the glory of their love. When the people would hear these songs, they would regard them as hymns to the martyred apostles of love.
They would then appeal to them and ask them to implore to God on their behalf, to send them a blueprint of their love. In times to come their love would be deemed as a replica by all lovers who would desire the same devotion from the objects of their love.
The poem has all the distinguishing qualities of Donne’s poetry: the hasty, theatrical opening and Donne’s exercise of conceits, Donne’s humorousness, and his use of overstatement and so on.
The poem, in a nutshell, handsomely deserves the praises that have been unanimously awarded to it.
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!"
May 4, 2017
Rereading this because I love it so much !
Reading ''The Language of Paradox'' really helped me understand it from the point of view of New-critics!
Reading ''The Language of Paradox'' really helped me understand it from the point of view of New-critics!
October 27, 2022
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; (oh. my. GOD)
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.
WHOA!!!!!! thats a hell of a stanza. i love u john donne my king
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; (oh. my. GOD)
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.
WHOA!!!!!! thats a hell of a stanza. i love u john donne my king
December 8, 2021
One of the best by John Donne, he turned the love into the immortality in the 3rd stanza.
April 13, 2021
i think i just found my new favorite poem. thx lit class
January 22, 2023
The Canonization
Great poem! I hold back and rarely give 5 stars.. but with Donne this is another 5 star rating for his poems, such as Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God; A Valediction; The Ecstasy.
“Observe … the king’s real, or his stamped face.” Coins?
Again, did this influence Emily Bronte?: “… Though she and I do love.”
“Call us what you will, we are made such by love,”
“And we in us find the eagle and the dove
The phoenix 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 the love.” *****
Great poem! I hold back and rarely give 5 stars.. but with Donne this is another 5 star rating for his poems, such as Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God; A Valediction; The Ecstasy.
“Observe … the king’s real, or his stamped face.” Coins?
Again, did this influence Emily Bronte?: “… Though she and I do love.”
“Call us what you will, we are made such by love,”
“And we in us find the eagle and the dove
The phoenix 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 the love.” *****
November 21, 2021
Good book in my opinion
July 2, 2023
Super difficult to understand; but once you analyse it, it is surprising.
February 6, 2026
the interplay of sex and religion? count me in!
September 28, 2022
read for class —
had to read this poem for class. i typically don’t really like poems, but i really enjoyed this one. we analyzed it and deconstructed it in class which, i think, added to my enjoyment. it allowed me to really understand what donne was talking about.
had to read this poem for class. i typically don’t really like poems, but i really enjoyed this one. we analyzed it and deconstructed it in class which, i think, added to my enjoyment. it allowed me to really understand what donne was talking about.
February 28, 2020
Donne is gonna be my fav forever for using the most misogynistic romantic lines.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews