John Donne

The Canonisation
Contexts and perspectives
This poem is often compared with The Sun Rising because of its similarly intense focus on the
relationship between the speaker and his lover to the exclusion of the surrounding world. This
is a useful comparison, and can be read in the context of Donnes early life, when he was very
ambitious to get a position at court, but also very frustrated by his inability to do so. Some
critics view the argument of these two poems as a desperate attempt to elevate the nature of
his love, by asserting rather grandly its power and its purity, in order to make himself feel less
rejected by the world he couldnt gain access to.
It is also interesting to note Donnes use of religious imagery in this poem, which is specifically
Roman Catholic in its references to canonisation and to people asking the saints to intercede
with God on their behalf. This was specifically Roman Catholic at a time when people who
publicly practised this form of Christianity were persecuted by the state. Donnes parents were
both Catholics, and his grandfather, his great uncle, his uncle, his mother, and his brother were
all either imprisoned, exiled or executed because of their faith. Donne himself studied at
Cambridge but could not get his degree because it was impossible for him to swear the
required oath of allegiance, acknowledging Queen Elizabeth Is authority as head of the Church
of England, a position the Pope considered his by divine right. When he moved to London to
study law, Donne had to decide whether to remain true to his faith or to abandon it in order to
pursue a political career in the protestant Elizabethan court.
Donne chose to pursue his worldly career, without any substantial success, until he eventually
gave up his ambitions and became ordained as an Anglican minister, later the Dean of St
Pauls Cathedral. Funny how life turns out Some critics have argued that in the most
intensely felt poems, that Catholic imagery reveals a deep-rooted sincerity, as the poet draws
deeply upon the imaginative world shaped within him during his childhood, rather than on
images of the material world around him as an adult. Many critics agree that an uncomfortable
tension between these two worlds is one of the things that gives his work an extraordinary
power, expressing, as it does, a painfully disjointed sensibility. The arrogance and the romantic
sensitivity, the coarsely sexual and the sublimely spiritual, the love and the hate, the intellectual
and the vernacular these contrasts can, if one chooses, all be seen as aspects of this
disjuncture, and the work as a whole as a triumph of the human mind in proving capable of
creating powerful, moving and beautiful art out of it. In that context, it is perhaps difficult to
have anything but respect for the argumentative, hectoring, superior voice that demands the
undivided attention of the reader, and demands it loudly.

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John Donne
The Canonisation
Summary
For Gods sake hold your tongue and let me love. Have a go at my shakiness, or my gout, my
five grey hairs, or jeer at my ruined fortune. Improve your position with money and your mind
with studies; take a course; get a job; pay attention to a judge or a duke, or contemplate the
Kings face, real or on a stamp. Try out whatever you like, so long as you let me love.
So what, so what, whos injured by my love? What merchants ships have my sighs drowned?
Who says my tears have flooded his land? When did my cold spells postpone an early spring?
When did the heat in my veins add one more to the list of plague victims? Soldiers find wars,
and lawyers still find litigious men who stir up quarrels, even though she and I love.
Call us what you will, we are made like this by love. Call us both moths, but were candles too,
and we die at our own expense; and we find in us both the eagle and the dove. The phoenix
riddle makes more sense for us we are it, being two in one. So, both sexes fit together in one
neutral thing. We die and rise up in the same way, and become a mystery through this love.
We can die by it, if not live by love; and if our story is unsuitable for tombs and hearse, it will be
fit for poetry; and if we dont prove to be a part of history, well still build pretty rooms in love
poems. A well-made urn is as appropriate for the greatest ashes as half-acre tombs, and
through these love poems, everyone will acknowledge that our love made us saints,
And will pray to us like this: you whose reverend love provided a spiritual hermitage for each
other; you, for whom love was peace that is now just raging frustration; who condensed the
whole worlds soul into the mirrors of your eyes, reflecting an image there of the epitome of all
countries, towns and courts: ask heaven to give us the pattern of your love!

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John Donne
The Canonisation
Explanations
Make sure you are clear about the meanings of these words in the poem, using close analysis
of the word in the context of its line, the glossary in your edition of the poems, dictionaries, and
perhaps an encyclopaedia.
Line
2
2
2
3
4
5
6
6
7
8
13
13
15
17
17
20
21
21
22
23
23
26
2627
33
33
35
35
36
37
38
4041

42
43

Word/phrase
chide
palsy
gout
flout
arts
place
his Honour
his Grace
stampd
approve
forward
remove
plaguy bill
litigious
move
fly
tapers
die
the eagle and the dove
phoenix
wit
rise
Prove / Mysterious by
this love
well-wrought
becomes
hymns
approve
canonised
invoke
hermitage
Who did the whole worlds
soul contract, and
drove/Into the glasses of
your eyes
mirrors spies
epitomise

Explanation

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John Donne
The Canonisation
Explanations teachers heres one I made earlier version
Line
2
2
2
3
4
5
6
6
7
8
13
13
15
17
17
20
21
21

Word/phrase
chide
palsy
gout
flout
arts
place
his Honour
his Grace
stampd
approve
forward
remove
plaguy bill
litigious
move
fly
tapers
die

22

the eagle and the dove

23

phoenix

23
26

wit
rise

2627

42

prove / Mysterious by
this love
well-wrought
becomes
hymns
approve
canonised
invoke
hermitage
Who did the whole
worlds soul contract,
and drove/Into the
glasses of your eyes
mirrors spies

43

epitomise

33
33
35
35
36
37
38
4041

Explanation
Scold or have a go at.
Physical shakiness associated with old age.
Painful swelling of joints.
Mock or jeer at.
Studies.
Placement or position (as in job).
Title used to address or talk formally about a judge.
Title used to address or talk formally about a duke.
Put on a stamp.
Try out.
Early.
Postpone.
The weekly list of those who had died in the plague.
Keen to use the law to solve disputes.
Stir up.
Moth.
Candles.
Obvious literal meaning but also a pun, die also being a colloquial
term for orgasm. This draws on the 17th century belief that every
orgasm reduced your life span by a day.
Symbolic of strength (considered masculine) and peace
(considered feminine).
A mythical bird. Only ever one at a time the riddle is how it
reproduced. This happened when the bird set on fire every 500
years, and a new bird arose from the ashes.
Sense.
Again, obvious literal meaning, but also a pun, rise being a
colloquial term for having an erection.
The purity of the lovers passion is compared with the phoenix and
the holy mysteries of religion all are beyond logical explanation.
Well-made.
Suits.
Songs of praise here referring to the love poems.
Acknowledge.
In Roman Catholicism, to declare a person to be a saint.
To call upon God for help.
A place of spiritual retreat.
This metaphor compares the process of their love with an
alchemist extracting the essential quality of a substance by driving
it through his apparatus into glass vessels.
Mirrors reflect, spies see their eyes see each other and reflect
one another.
Represent in summary.
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John Donne
The Canonisation
Themes and issues, attitudes and values
1. This poem is often compared with The Sun Rising for its treatment of love. What
similarities and differences do you find between the themes and issues, attitudes and
values of the poems?
2. Who do you imagine the speaker is addressing?
3. How convincing do you find the speakers repudiation of worldly success, and his
claims that love is more important than commercial, civic and social action?
4. Traditionally, the public world of commercial, civil and social action is regarded as the
appropriate domain for men, and the private world of domestic action is regarded as
the appropriate domain for women. How do these constructs of masculinity and
femininity affect your reading of the poem? Does John Donne take a traditional view?
5. Some critics have suggested that it is difficult for the reader to accept the argument of
this poem because the speaker tells us in the last stanza that we will be begging him
for a model of his love, suggesting that none of us will ever have anything but an
inferior experience compared to him. What is your opinion of this perspective?
Language
Stanza 1
1. What characteristics of the diction give the opening line such vernacular force?
2. How would you collectively describe the first three images in line 2 and 3? What do
they suggest about the speakers identity?
3. hold and let in line 1, chide in line 2, flout in line 3, improve in line 4, take and
get in line 5, observe in line 6, contemplate in line 8, approve in line 8. What do
you notice about these verbs? What impression of the speaker and of his attitude do
they create?
Stanza 2
1. This stanza is dominated by 5 questions. What impression of the speaker and of his
attitude do they create?
2. Sighs, tears and fevers were all part of the traditional imagery of the suffering lover.
What does this imagery add to your understanding of the speakers relationship and
his attitude towards it?
3. What word ends the first and last lines of each stanza? What is the significance of this
observation?
Stanza 3
1. What does this image of the moth and the candles suggest about the relationship
between the lovers?
2. What does the symbolic use of the eagle and the dove add to your understanding of
the speakers relationship and his attitude towards it? Consider the impact of symbolic
expression, as well the meaning of these specific ones.
3. How does the phoenix metaphor contribute further to that understanding?

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John Donne
The Canonisation
Stanza 4
1. What contribution do the puns about dying make to the poem?
2. Their love may not be suitable for legend and chronicle, but for verse, sonnets
and hymns. What two types of writing are being contrasted here, and how does this
tie in with the public/private distinction made elsewhere in this poem? What does it
also suggest about Donnes attitude to his work?
Stanza 5
1. invoke, reverend, hermitage in the opening lines of this stanza, and hymns and
canonised in the last lines of the previous one. What image of religious life is
presented here and how does it contrast in the poem with the secular world?
2. What features of Donnes language use clearly signal the prayer included in the final
stanza? This is a highly rhetorical form of speech. What impact does it have on you
and your understanding of the poem?
Structure
1. How does the structure of the poem support the movement of thought in the poem?
Form
1. The rhyme scheme of the poem is abbacccaa. How does this embody the movement
of thought in each stanza?
2. Annotate a copy of the poem to show the rhythm. What is the dominant metre of the
poem? What effect does this create?
3. How does the rhythm change in line 8? What change of tone does this signal?
4. A similar rhythm change and tone change occurs in stanza 2. Where and why?
5. What do you notice about the rhythm of the first 2 lines of stanza 3 and the first line of
stanza 4? What does this suggest about the speakers conversational strategy?
6. The rhythm of the final stanza is very measured, with few shifts or changes. How does
this support the meaning of the stanza?

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