The Canonization
BY JOHN DONNE
For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
What is Metaphysical Poetry?
Metaphysical poetry is a type of poetry written in the 17th century by poets like John Donne, George Herbert, and Andrew Marvell. These poets focused on deep ideas like love, religion, life, death, and the soul. They used unusual comparisons (called conceits) and clever arguments to explore these big topics.
Key Features of Metaphysical Poetry:
-
Clever, witty language
-
Strange but meaningful metaphors
-
Philosophical ideas
-
Use of science, religion, and myth together
-
Emotional intensity
The Canonization is one of John Donne’s most famous metaphysical poems. In this poem, the speaker defends his love against the criticism of society. People often mocked Donne for his secret marriage to Anne More, and here the speaker responds to such critics. He says that love is not harmful, and even if society refuses to honour it, poetry will preserve it forever.
The central idea of the poem is that true love is like a religion—it is sacred, pure, and eternal. Donne uses unusual comparisons (conceits), paradoxes, and witty arguments to show that love should be respected just like sainthood.
In the second stanza the speaker compares himself and his beloved to different paired images. What makes difference in the poem is the shared equality. They are like:
-
Candles burning together, in Indian context Diya
-
Two flies that live and die together,
-
An eagle (strength) and a dove (peace) joined in one body juxtaposed images,
-
A phoenix (a mythical bird that dies and rises again). Phoenix bird is androgenous that means without their mat rebirths again. This also chellenges the traditional idea of the love.
Through these comparisons, he shows that their love makes them one single being, mysterious and eternal. Like the phoenix, even if their love dies, it will be reborn again. In this stanza, Donne says love unites opposites and creates something greater than ordinary life.
In the third stanza of The Canonization, the speaker reflects on the way love will be remembered. He admits openly that their love may not give them worldly success they may not become powerful rulers, soldiers, or rich merchants. Their names may not appear in grand chronicles of history.
Instead, their love will live on through poetry. He says their verses will become like “pretty rooms” a symbolic place where their love will be preserved forever. Even if society does not build great monuments for them, poetry will become their memorial.
Donne then uses funeral and tomb imagery to emphasize this point. He says that while great men may have elaborate tombs and hearses, he and his beloved do not need such grand monuments. Even a “half-acre tomb” or a “palfry hearse” (a simple, modest grave) would be enough for them, because their true monument lies not in stone but in the immortality of verse.
The speaker imagines future generations reading about their love in poems. For these readers, their love will become like a holy example. People will admire and “invoke” them, just as saints are worshipped. Their love will become a model for others to understand true devotion. In this stanza, Donne presents the idea of canonization: their love is so pure that it deserves sainthood.
In the final stanza, the speaker says that their love will be remembered as a religion of love. People will look at their story as a sacred hymn, and they will be honoured as “saints of love.” Their love, instead of being mocked, will be respected forever. The final message: True love is divine, eternal, and worthy of worship, just like religion.
Here, love is seen as a cyclical force: it consumes, destroys, and yet renews itself with even greater power.
Now, if we look at the structure of the poem itself, it mirrors this phoenix-like cycle:
-
Stanza 1 – Death through Criticism:
The speaker begins under attack — his critics want to “kill” his love with their judgments. Society tries to bury his passion by mocking him for age, poverty, or foolishness. -
Stanza 2 – Burning / Consumption:
The lovers are compared to candles, flies, and finally the phoenix. Their love “burns” them out, but in the process, it transforms into something mysterious and eternal. -
Stanza 3 – Ashes and Tombs:
The imagery of “tombs” and “hearses” suggests the apparent death of their love in worldly terms. They may not leave behind great monuments; they may be buried in obscurity. -
Stanza 4 – Rebirth in Poetry:
From the ashes of worldly death, love rises again in the form of verse. Their poems become the “hymns” that will immortalize them. -
Stanza 5 – Eternal Life / Canonization:
Finally, their love is not only reborn but transfigured into sainthood. Just like the phoenix achieves eternal renewal, the lovers achieve eternal recognition — not through material monuments, but through spiritual canonization in poetry.
The poem is densely packed with metaphors and conceits comparing love to various creatures (flies, phoenix), objects (candles) and grand concepts (immortality through verse). These metaphors lend love an aura of sacred importance.
Critical Views on Donne and Metaphysical Poetry
Dr. Samuel Johnson’s View :
Dr. Samuel Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets (1779–81), famously criticized Donne and the Metaphysical poets for their conceits and intellectual wit. He writes:
“The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.” (Johnson, Lives of the English Poets)
Johnson admired their wit but suggested that it often sacrificed naturalness and smoothness of expression. In context of Donne’s love poetry, this means that while he achieves striking originality (like comparing lovers to maps, compasses, or phoenixes), his method can feel forced to some traditional readers. This is evident in Donne’s comparison of love to “tombs” and “hearses” alongside the idea of love’s canonization, mixing sacred and secular images.
T. S. Eliot’s View
In contrast, modernist poet-critic T. S. Eliot defended Donne and the Metaphysical school. In his essay The Metaphysical Poets (1921), Eliot argued that Donne represented a unity of thought and feeling which later poets lost. He coined the famous phrase “dissociation of sensibility” to describe this break:
“A dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered; and this dissociation, as I believe, was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful poets of the seventeenth century, Milton and Dryden.” (Eliot, The Metaphysical Poets)
For Eliot, Donne and his contemporaries could “feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose,” meaning that their intellectual ideas and emotional intensity were fused. Donne unites intellect and passion in lines where wit and emotion merge for example:
“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.”
This shows how poetry transcends mortality, fusing intense passion with intellectual conceits.
Conclusion :
John Donne’s The Canonization is a remarkable example of metaphysical poetry that fuses wit, intellect, and passion. Through paradox and conceit, Donne elevates a personal experience of love into a universal truth. The poem shows how true love transcends the ordinary world of wealth, politics, and ambition, and instead creates its own sacred space. Donne presents love as a spiritual experience so intense, so complete, that it deserves the reverence given to saints.
Thinking Activity Task: The Canonization and Our Lives :
1. Donne equates love to sainthood. In your day-to-day life, what do people treat as “sacred” or most important? (For example: friendship, family, career, or even mobile phones/social media). Compare this with Donne’s idea of lovers being canonized. How similar or different is our modern sense of “sacred”?
2. Donne dismisses wealth, politics, and business in favor of love. In your own life or people around you, do you see examples where relationships are valued over money or success or vice versa? Compare with Donne’s claim that love outlasts worldly recognition.
3. Donne believes his poetry will immortalize his love. Today, people use Instagram, music, films, or writing to “immortalize” moments and emotions. Can you think of a post, song, or movie that has kept love or memory alive for people? Compare this with Donne’s use of poetry.
Works Cited :
Donne, John. “The Canonization.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44118/the-canonization.
Eliot, T. S. “The Metaphysical Poets.” Selected Essays. Faber & Faber, 1932.
Johnson, Samuel. Lives of the English Poets. 1779–81.
No comments:
Post a Comment