Friday, November 12, 2010

The Canonization



The Canonization” is one of Donne’s most famous and most written-about poems. While reading i also felt that the poet is trying to let us believe that love is something holy, so he is using the poem as a hymn to worship love by later generations.Donne  is known for his language and versification. His style and the superior tone of this poem is highly revolutionary and he proves to be very successful in making the original whole of expression of love in the way how it should be!

The canonization celebrates the realization  of ultimate bliss through love.It was written around 1633.
Donne doesn't wants anyone to disturb him and just to let him love his lover.as his love is not doing any harm to others.
  Here's the poem..

For God sake hold your tongue! and let me love,
Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
My five grey haires, or ruined fortune flout;
With wealth your state, your minde with arts, improve;
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his honour, or his grace,
Or the King's real, or his stamped face
Contemplate: what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.


 “For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love”, Donne distances  love from worldly affairs and earthly power. He dismisses whomever the exclamation is directed to, instructing them to concentrate of criticizing his physical flaws, or he tells them  to go and make a career by cultivating a nobleman or Bishop, visiting the King’s court, or making money.
He does not care what the addressee says or does, as long as he lets him love.
 
Alas, ala, 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 plague bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.

He says noone is injured by his love,its not doing any harm to anyone. his sighs have not drowned ships, his tears have not flooded land, his colds have not chilled spring, and the heat of his veins has not added to the list of those killed by the plague. Soldiers still find wars and lawyers still find litigious men, regardless of the emotions of him and his lover.

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 th' 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 his love


These are my fav lines in the poem.
.
He says that the addressee can “Call her one, me another fly,” and that they are also like candles (“tapers”), which burn by feeding upon their own selves . In each other, the lovers find the eagle and the dove,  just as the phoenix does,they die and rise..Alike the phoenix, they burn themselves to be consumed by the power of love and are regenerated.
he eagle can be seen as strong and masculine and the dove peaceful and feminine. 
The 'one neutral thing' is love, which exists in a such a way that it fits both the man and the woman. 
"By us; we two being one, are it." By this he means their love has brought them together, to a point where they are no longer two people, but they are one, and he goes on to talk about how, because they are one, they are no longer separated by the differences of the sexes, and this mysterious occurrence can only further prove that what they have is true 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 urne becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs;
And by these hymns all shall approve
Us canonized for Love:

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!"


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,  the poems ,sonnest 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 lover. the two lovers will always be connected, although in time they will die a physical death they will live on to be "A pattern of ... love!" Meaning that because of their love they will live in everyone's mind and heart. for future generations of lovers.And lovers will remember their love story.

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