Two by Donne

     When John Donne was young, he wrote some of the most extraordinarily passionate love poems in the English language (1590’s). In his great love poem, “The Canonization” Donne argues with a friend and attempts to rebut the criticisms his companion has made regarding his love affair.

               The Canonization

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love.
   Or chide my palsy, or my gout;
My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout;
   With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve;
      Take you a course, get you a place,
      Observe his honor, or his grace;
And the king's real, or his stamped face
      Contemplate; what you will, approve,
      So you let me love.

Alas, alas, who's injur'd by my love?
   What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?
Who says my tears have overflowed his ground?
   When did my colds a forward spring remove?
      When did the hearts which my veins fill
      Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyer find out still
      Litigious men, which quarrel move,
      Though she and I do love.

Call us what you will, we are made such by love;
   Call her one, me another fly,
We're taper 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 this love.

We can die by it, if not love by love,
   and if unfit for tombs or hearse
Our legends 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 urn 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.

     This poem can confuse readers because of Donne’s abrupt, argumentative start, abstract references, and intellectual complexity. The poem begins in what appears to be an argument between the speaker and a friend who has questioned the value or legitimacy of his relationship. He snaps at this “listener” and tell him to “shut up" and “let me love,” and wittily directs him to criticize his other faults—his graying hair, his poor financial circumstances. If those ideas won’t have him change the topic, he advises him to find himself a position at court, examine the king’s behavior or just think about anything else.

     If unable to persuade his listener to think about any else but his relationship, he tries to reason with him by asking whom or what his love has “injur’d”? Has his love destroyed commerce, flooded land, delay spring, or increased deaths from plague? As the stanza slides through the last three lines, the speaker concludes that their love affects neither wars nor civil litigation.

     After attempting to distract the listener, the speaker focuses on the power and quality of their love. Their sexual passion is uncontainable (symbolism of “fly”), though perhaps ephemeral (“We’re tapers too”), but they embody also pure masculinity and femininity (“th’eagle and the dove”). Their love fuses a perfect union in which their entire beings, bodies and souls, become one, and furnishes their love with a “Mysterious[ness].

     By the fourth stanza, their love morphs from the carnal to the spiritual. The story of their love may not be epic enough for a great tomb, but their “legend” (word also meant for life of a saint) will do nicely in “sonnets” and “pretty rooms.” Those sonnets become the “hymns” that will confirm the canonization of the love they shared. By this point in the poem, the speaker has left his listener behind, as he envisions future lovers petitioning these canonized saints for a pattern of their love to emulate. Though this is no easy poem to understand at first, after several rereading it should certainly impress if not astonish the reader with the way Donne incorporates such disparate elements and so radically transform the speaker’s tone from the opening aggressive line to the closing serene wording. But does Donne’s argument convince?

     Upon first encountering much of John Donne’s poetry, the reader will see that his poems can be confounding. All those allusions to religion, to the Bible; all the oblique references to mythology, legends, contemporary issues, politics, commerce etc. require much more patience than contemporary reading habits are accustomed to. Even the great 18th century critic Dr. Johnson noted that Donne’s poetry could present difficulty: “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 is right that our improvement is “dearly bought” by the labor exerted in understanding Donne’s poetry. But many would not agree with his judgment that readers are “seldom pleased” by reading Donne. Fortunately, not all of Donne’s poems are weighted with “heterogeneous ideas.” For instance, there is the charming “Sweetest love, I do not go”:

Sweetest love, I do not go,
   For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
   A fitter love for me;
       But since that I 
Must die at last, 'tis best,
To use myself in jest
      Thus by feign'd deaths to die.

Yesternight the sun went hence,
   And yet is here today;
He hath no desire nor sense,
   Nor half so short a way;
      Then fear not me,
But believe that I shall make
Speedier journeys, since I take
   Moe wings and spurs than he.

Oh how feeble is man's power,
   That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
   Nor a lost hour recall.
      But come bad chance,
And we join to it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
   Itself o'er us to'advance.

When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st not wind,
   But sigh'st my soul away;
When thou weep'st, unkindly kind,
   My life's blood doth decay.
      It cannot be
That thou lov'st me, as thou say'st,
If in thine my life thou wast,
   Thou art the best of me.


Let not thy divining heart
   Forethink me any ill;
Destiny may take thy part,
   And may thy fears fulfil.
      But think that we 
Are but turn'd aside to sleep;
They who one another keep
   Alive, ne'er parted be.

     In this poem, Donne wants to persuade his wife not to fear for his safe return from the journey he was about to take to France and the Low Countries with his patron Sir Robert Drury. His logic certainly could not convince the modern reader, and perhaps slightly reassured Anne who naturally would have worried given the dangers and difficulties of such a journey. Donne jests that his journey is a sort of rehearsal for the inevitability of death. He observes that the sun makes longer journeys each day, so his will be even “Speedier.” He reminds her not to add to her fear by dwelling on his absence. He urges her not to sigh or weep, since doing so makes him feel his “life’s blood” is being “decay[ed]”. Finally, he even panics a little himself and tells her that her “divining heart” might bring about the very misfortune he is trying to convince her will not occur and that she should think of their coming separation as no different from when they are “turn’d aside to sleep.” Although the couple were “parted” during his journey, Donne did return safely, and he and Anne were reunited.

     These two poems, one complex, one simple offer a glimpse into Donne’s poetry. Many of his other love poems are considerably more difficult and require a strenuous effort on behalf of a reader to attain the pleasure his verse can and does inspire. Fortunately, there are texts available with ample footnotes and helpful introductions to guide readers along on their Donnean journeys.