John Donne's The Canonization

"The Canonization" celebrates the realization of ultimate bliss through love. It was written around 1603, after the death of Queen Elizabeth and accession of James I to the throne. It is one of the most significant love poems of Donne. Commenting on the poem, Coleridge says:"It is one of my favourite poems. As late as ten years ago, I used to seek and find out grand lines and fine stanzas; but my delight has been far greater since it has consisted more in tracing the leading thought throughout the whole. The former is too much like coveting your neighbour's good; in the latter you merge yourself with the author, you become 'He'"

The impulsive and dramatic opening is characteristic of Donne. The poet wants others others to leave him alone to relish his love in peace. He describes the various ways in which his aristocratic friends while away their time. They travel, they try to get posts in in the government by flattery and cultivation of a king or of a lord. The poem seems to be written in reaction to the critics of his love-life. Writing, is not only aspiration for him, but one of the very activities of living, and will be obliged to be left uninterrupted. The poet prefers scorn at hi palsie(disease that causes paralysis), gout(inflammation of joints caused by constant consumption of wine and rich food or his five grey hairs( the five senses that have lost their virility with the advance of years0.The poet does not mind his love being considered as an infirmity, but he wants to confine his friend's derision to bodily ailments and worldly fortune.

The speaker asserts that nothing has been changed in the world by their love It has the minimum effect of affecting just two individuals. The sight of the lover has just drowned his lovers in his, but not merchant ships. The poet's tears have not overflowed even the farmer's ground. Neither has the blissful love's coolness removed a spring time in the life of others. The heats or his hot passions have not added to the fever of the Plague. The poet thus mocks at his friend with his hyperboles exemplifying that the friend is an anti-romantic who is dry and logical in his attitude to passion in general. Donne parodies the Petrarchan writers who had exaggerated their sufferings through far-fetched conceits.

Donne asserts that they may be called whatever the world chooses to call them. The poet presents to us a picture of martyrs as he portrays the lovers as flees who destroy themselves in order to prove their love. They are likened to tapers that destroy themselves in order to exist. The poet also claims that they find in each other the powerful eagle and the timid dove, the eagle usually preying upon the other. We find a similar comparison in George Herbert's poem "The Sacrifice": "But who does hawk at eagle with a dove." The poet likens their unioun to that of the phoenix.The oneness, uniqueness and neutrality to the outside world is suggested through this similarity .Alike the phoenix, they burn themselves to be consumed by the power of love and are regenerated. The poet does not consider physical passion to be considered the ultimate aim of love, but only a stage of development in the process towards being canonized.

The poet exclaims that they can die gracefully with love if not live by it. If their love is not fit to confine itself to the expanse of the tomb, it will be eligible for versification by virtue of which it will live on eternally. They do not mean to prove themselves historically. The poet implies that they will build a beautiful memorial with stanzas. The poet utilizes the apt word 'sonnet' to signify something concise, precise and dedicated. The phenomenon of contracting things is common to Donne.

The final stanza has the form of an invocation: You who did contract into yourselves the soul of the whole world and throw it on the mirror of your eyes, making them such mirrors, that they gave you everything in epitomy, countries, towns and courts, we your worshippers pray you to petition heaven for us to give us a pattern, that is, a copying of your love. The poet asks to consider their love as an idealized pattern and asks them to ask God to grant them with something similar. Prof .Grierson suggests that they have been canonized: now they are saints.