Symbol Analysis
There's a lot of looking going on "The Canonization." People are told to watch other people or representations of people, the lover-saints look back at us poor mortals here on Earth, and we for our part look up to them. As a result, we have a lot of modeling and mirroring—both of ideal love and the run-down reality of the world. Once you start to look for it, really, this poem is loaded with looking imagery.
Don't take our word for it, though. Just have a look yourself.
- Lines 6-7: The speaker has a lot of helpful suggestions about how to pass the time. He offers these to the person he's addressing as alternatives to nagging the speaker about his relationship. For example, he can go watch a judge ("his Honour") or a member of the royal family ("his Grace"). Now, the speaker's not advocating that the addressed goes out and stalks these people. Watching here (the word used is "Observe") means to study, as in trying to become like these folks. The speaker also invites the addressed to observe the king, either in real life or in his likeness as it's stamped on a coin. In that last request, the speaker uses a figurative expression to mean money, as in "Go study how to make some and leave me alone, pal."
- Lines 40-45: This portion of the poem is admittedly tough sledding, but it's all about looking and being seen. At this point, the speaker and his lover have been (according to his fantasy) elevated as saints. In doing so, they "did the whole world's soul contract, and drove/ Into the glasses of [their] eyes;" (40-41). That sounds painful, but what it really means is that now these lover-saints can take in the "soul" of the world and reflect it in their eyes ("glasses" here means mirrors, not those things you sport on your face). The lovers' eyes are both "mirrors" and "spies," or observers (42), and they don't miss a beat: "They did all to you epitomize" (43). Far below them, back on Earth, folks look up to these lovers and "beg from above/ A pattern of [their] love" (44-45). In other words, the rest of the world is literally looking up to these lovers, asking them for advice on how to love properly. The upshot to this conceit, then, is that the lover-saints are folks who see (and know) everything, and so are people to be admired, looked up to, and asked for advice. See what we mean when we said looking was important to this poem?