Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 28-36
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;
- Well what if the couple just died? Would that make everybody happy? (Man, this sure escalated quickly.)
- The speaker suggests that he and his beloved may die together ("by love") just as they lived together. If that were to happen, and if their story ("legend") wasn't found to be appropriate for a conventional memorial like a tomb or a hearse, then it would find a good home in a poem ("fit for verse"). Hmm—maybe the speaker has this poem in mind.
- The speaker continues, saying that if the lovers' story didn't make it into the history books ("chronicle"), then sonnets would be a good place to tell their story.
- In fact, poems would be just as appropriate a place for them to live on and be remembered as a "well-wrought urn" (33) or "half-acre tombs" are appropriate places for the "greatest ashes" (34). The metaphor working in lines 33 and 34 is a bit tricky, but basically the speaker is comparing the final resting places of "great" people (signified here as "ashes")—like urns (which hold cremated remains) and giant tombs—to the poems in which he and his beloved will be remembered.
- What's more, in these poems ("hymns"), the lovers will finally get the acceptance they've been after.
- Actually, they'll get more than accepted, they'll be canonized by everyone, or made into saints. Their love, then, will make them as holy as saints. This explains Donne's choice of title, but we say a whole lot more about this over in "What's Up With the Title?"