Mortality
“Song: to Celia” is almost as much about death as it is about love, even though the poem never explicitly alludes to it. In the third couplet, Jonson describes a “thirst that from the soul doth rise” which asks “a drink divine.” He’s referencing a Christian metaphor that compares God to a drink of water. While normal water keeps us alive for a few days, the divine drink keeps us alive forever. Jonson’s invocation of that divine drink points out what Celia cannot offer him: eternal life. The second half of the poem picks up on that same idea. The speaker gifts a wreath to Celia, in the hope that she will keep it alive. Yet instead she sends it back to him. The final lines leave ambiguous whether her breath is enough to revive the flowers, or whether the wreath now withers, its rotting smell recalling that of Celia’s own inevitable decay.
Desire
As a love poem, “Song: to Celia” is obviously concerned with desire. Yet the desire depicted in the poem is somewhat strange. The poet never refers to Celia’s body herself, instead expressing desire for the ways her body touches the world. He wants her eyes to meet his and convey her interest, for her lips to leave a kiss in the cup, and for her breath to touch the wreath. These indirect references keep distance between the speaker and Celia. They emphasize the speaker’s desperation: he’s so in love with Celia that even indirect contact with her would satisfy him. They also emphasize the purity of his desire. “Song: to Celia” was published as part of “The Forest,” a collection of fifteen poems. The first of these is titled “Why I write Not of Love,” and details the poet’s objections to writing about the “act of Love.” Although “Song: to Celia” seems to defy this opening poem, its refusal to write about direct physical touch or bodily desire follows from Jonson’s commitment to avoiding the topic of erotic love.
Elaborate Love Poetry
In writing “Song: to Celia,” Jonson was joining a poetic conversation. Many poets of his era wrote elaborate love poems, whose complex metaphors and hyperbolic compliments had more to do with displaying poetic prowess than wooing a particular woman. Critics sometimes talk about “Song: to Celia” as akin to a carefully polished gemstone. The poem perfectly adheres to the standards of the genre. Even its ambiguity enables Jonson to accomplish a careful melding of two tropes: the elaborate compliment, and the “carpe diem” poem which reminds the addressee of her own mortality. Some poems are ambiguous in a “messy” way—we get the sense that the poem got away from its own author, leaving the reader free to read it in a number of ways. “Song: to Celia” is absolutely under Jonson’s control.
