Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 37-45
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."
- This stanza picks up a thought that was left incomplete at the end of the last stanza. That's called enjambment in the poetry biz, folks.
- Remember that the speaker was talking about how everyone is going to canonize the lovers as saints, thanks to the poems ("hymns") in which they will appear (36).
- Now these same people who canonized them will address the saint-lovers. (Again, remember that this is all part of the speaker's fantasy about what might happen if he and his lover die and get remembered through poetry.) So, what will these folks say? We bet it's more good things.
- Yep—they say that the lovers' holy ("reverend") love created a kind of private, spiritual retreat for them (that's what a "hermitage" is).
- Once upon a time (maybe back when they were alive), love was peace for our couple, but now (that they're up in heaven as saints) it's a source of rage. We wonder why that's the case. Let's read on…
- The couple contracted the whole world's soul, it turns out, and were able to put that essence into the "glasses" of their eyes. ("Glasses" meant "mirrors" in this seventeenth century, not spectacles). In other words, the eyes of these love-saints reflect the world's soul. With us so far? Good, let's keep climbing this hilly little metaphor.
- Having contracted the world's soul and reflecting it in their eyes, now everything is reflected in the lovers' view. Their eyes have become "mirrors" that reflect and "spies" that notice (42) "all" (43). Everything in the world is "epitomized," or represented, in their view (43). Those are some pretty powerful peepers.
- Of course, the lovers can't really be happy about what they see. They look down on a world that is looking back to them for model of how to love. "Countries, towns, courts beg from" (44) the lovers "a pattern" (45) of love that they can follow. The implication here is that the folks back on Earth are loving all wrong, and they need the lover's help to sort it all out.
- So that's why love is now a source of rage for these lovers. They got it so right that they went on to become love-saints, but now nobody that's left behind on Earth can hope to love in the same way. Compared to this couple, nobody knows how to love anymore—how irritating.
- So get it together, all you lovers out there.