Close reading of “The Cannonization” with 4 Types of Meaning

Sense: The speaker in the first two stanzas makes pleas to his audience to “let [him] love.” In the first, he does not care if his audience “chides [his] palsy, or [his] gout” as long as he is able to love. He continues on by citing hyperbolic hypothetical situations of which his mere act of love was not the cause—no one is injured, no “merchant’s ships have…drowned.” In the third stanza, the speaker illustrates the nature of their love with several metaphors that share the theme of two conjuncts that create a whole. The lovers are like an eagle and a dove, but the speaker offers that the phoenix is a more appropriate metaphor for them. If their love is unfit for life and death, it will be expressed in verse, which he compares to and urn.

Feeling- The speaker clearly values love, the subject of the poem, for he compares his/their love to the canonization of saints, “all shall approve/Us canonized for love.” This metaphor is blasphemous as to compare the sacred ritual to the worldly. But the speaker does this intentionally as to contrast their divine love with carnal love.

Tone- The speaker seems angry or indignant toward his audience. His mention of the hyperbolic like, “tears have overflow’d the ground” and the cliché love poem notion that love can exist beyond the worldly in the fourth stanza with their mocking, sarcastic attitude serve to compound the speaker’s tone.

Intention- The speaker aims to demonstrate the nature of his love, that is almost other-worldy and beyond the carnal, profane love. He achieves this primarily through feeling.