Canonization by John Donne

5. Describe the effective use of Rhetorical interrogatives in the poem Canonization ?  
The canonization is a playful and yet a complex poem. In this poem Donne declares lovers to be saints of love. The poem moves on to dwell on the theme of love in a serious, philosophical strain.
In   stanza two each rhetorical interrogatives like: -
“Alas, alas, who’s injur’d have my sighs drown’d, is a potential image.”
The comparison of ‘sighs’ to sea-storms, ‘tears’ to flood are similar to the well developed conceits in the poem, valediction : of weeping.
The Comparison of the temperatures of the body to the great destructive five occurs in ‘A FEVER’. But here, the poet keeps with the mood of realism. He hints at the possibilities only to reject them; for his is the most harmless and innocent love. He says that the activities of the world and of nature will not be hampered, by his act of loving her.
Soldiers will still find causes for declaring war, and lawyer will still find habitual litigants to feed them, if the poet loves his beloved.
Do we know what the word allusion means?
It means a brief or indirect reference. We can also detect a streak of satire in these allusions to world’s activities; they are commerce and business, occasional natural calamities like flood, spring delayed, the pestilent plague, fighting wars and legal battles in the court. Thus the poet imposes the nature of his love, that it belongs to the realm of individual passion which would be least concerned with the other activities of the