A subtle sense of panic permeates Donne's Canonization, in the guise of a meditation on mortality and the transient nature of relationships. The religious overtones of canonization itself are difficult to ignore, as well as the opening line's invocation of blasphemy (as discussed in class) which, by the poem's end, gives way to a veritable appeal to holy authorities (worldly or otherwise) to accept coarse earthly love as something sacred. In the course of the poem, Donne's gaze shifts from one of renunciation of holiness (and indeed, the historical context of Donne's stance of religious authority is palpable) to a different kind of renunciation; that of the grandiose and worldly. In memorializing corporeal love, the poem validates man's brief existence, and the urge to somehow be memorialized.
-Will
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