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Poetry · Poem

Song

John DonneSeventeenth-century EnglishPoem
SOURCE TEXT · English original
GO and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil’s foot;
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be’st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights
Till Age snow white hairs on thee;
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find’st one, let me know;
Such a pilgrimage were sweet,
Yet do not; I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet.
Though she were true when you met her,
And last till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two or three.
Cultural reading

Reading the poem

A list of impossible errands—catching a falling star, hearing mermaids sing—leads to the claim that no woman is both true and fair, and that even one reported as true would have turned false before the speaker could reach her.

Language notes

Text and edition

The English text follows the fixed historical witness in The Oxford Book of English Verse; no modern third-party translation is included.