The Canonization

by John Donne

　　 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 Honour, or his Grace;

　　Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face

　　 Contemplate; what you will, approve,

　　 So you will let me love.

　　Alas! alas! who's injured by my love?

　　 What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?

　　 Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?

　　When did my colds a forward spring remove?

　　 When did the heats which my veins fill

　　 Add one more to the plaguy bill?

　　Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still

　　 Litigious men, which quarrels move,

　　 Though she and I do love.

　　Call's 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 this love.

　　We can die by it, if not live by love,

　　 And if unfit for tomb or 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 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."