Have you ever wanted to be a love-saint? Or maybe—like most people on Earth—you're wondering just what in the wide world of sports a love-saint is. In either case, we have your poet and we have your poem.

John Donne's "The Canonization" came out a while ago, in 1633—two years after his death—in the first edition of his book Songs and Sonnets. It's not a story about a pirate's favorite gun, nor a story about a camera. It's not even about a fictional 1970s detective. (Okay, so that last reference was a little dated—sorry.) It's about a couple that loves so deeply, so perfectly, that they become…well, canonized. In other words, they gain holy sainthood thanks to their earthly love.

We say a lot more about that idea over in "What's Up With the Title?", but for now it's worth knowing that this poem has three of the main characteristics of your typical Donne poem. The first of these is love. Donne was a sucker for it, and he often wrote about love's importance in our daily lives.

The second Donne-ian quality of this poem is religion. Donne was raised a Catholic, but in England at the time, that was a big no-no. He couldn't graduate college and even had a hard time finding a job until he converted to the official religion of England: Anglicanism. Given that rocky start, it may not surprise you that Donne often took a pretty edgy view of religion, and this poem is a prime example of that.

The third element of "The Canonization" that really stamps this as a Donne piece is something called a "conceit." This is a striking, often unusual, and extended metaphor that asks your brain to travel in new and challenging places. Donne's use of conceits earned him some fame after his death, but then was rejected by prominent critics as too far out there. Eventually, though, folks like T.S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats rediscovered Donne in the 1920s. They were big fans of the unusual comparisons and inventive language that Donne brought to the table, and he's been held up as a master poet ever since.

Want to see what all the fuss is about? Then for God's sake hold your tongue and read this poem.

You know the couple. Or if you don't, you've seem them before, strolling around with their matching outfits. Or maybe they're constantly laughing at their inside jokes that only the two of them get. And don't even get us started on their cutesy nicknames. Frankly, it's almost too much to stomach.

If you've ever rolled your eyes at a pair like this and made a throw-up gesture behind their backs, we get it. We really do. These couples can be beyond annoying. But what is it really that triggers all our anger and nausea? At the end of the day, what is their love really hurting? Could it just be that we're masking our jealousy behind a wall of jaded cynicism?

These are difficult questions to face down, but John Donne's "The Canonization" is going to put them to you straight. It takes the side of the lovers and really forces you to think about how marvelously awesome it is to be in love. It also reminds you that—when you do find that special someone—it often seems like you're the only two people on Earth that get one another.

So is love the supremely uplifting, practically holy experience that some folks make it out to be? This poem makes a pretty good argument that it is. And is that such a bad thing? After all, if we can't count on love to lift us up, what can we count on?

Think about those question while you read. At the end of the day, this poem is a full-on, nitro-charged, firework-filled celebration of love. If you're already in love, you're going to recognize its unique joys in these lines. And if you're not, well, this poem might cause you to re-think all that haterade you're drinking about the folks who have actually found that special someone.