Go and Catch a Falling Star by John Donne Summary and Analysis

                                 

John Donne was a metaphysical poet, the term first used by John Dryden for his poetry. This song was published in 1633, two years later, after the death of John Donne. The poem can be divided into three stanzas. The poet is directly addressed to someone. The poem is about the inconsistent nature of women. He says that finding an honest and beautiful woman is impossible. Beauty and honesty can never go ahead.

First Stanza

Go and catch a falling star,

Get with child a mandrake root,

Tell me where all the past years are,

Or who cleft the devil’s foot,

Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

Or, to keep off envy’s singing,

And find

What wind

Serves to advance an honest mind.

In the first stanza, the poet gives seven impossible tasks to someone. Imperatively he says go and catch a falling star. That is the first impossible task because a falling star has very high speed and is impossible to detect. By putting the second impossible task, the poet says to produce a child from a mandrake root (a human shape like herbs). The figure is close to the man, but it isn’t easy to make a child from the plant. Tell me where the past years have gone is again an impossible task to bring in the past years. Time waits for no one, and anyone can never bring a second.

The fourth task is the poet asking a question who forked the foot of the devil? Here the poet used allusion to give reference to Greek mythology. It is considered that someone forked the devil’s foot, but no one knows who did this. In the fifth line, he d to tell the tasks that teach me how mermaids sing. A mermaid is a female, like a creature having no legs but fish. Envy is an intuitive quality of humans. John Milton also mentioned it in ‘Paradise Lost. It will be difficult to remove jealousy, and no one can be with such a feature. And tell me which way to give an honest mind’s progress. The world does not like a natural person and never let him a chance to flourish.

Second Stanza

If thou best 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, wilt tell me,

All strange wonders that befell thee,

And swear,

Nowhere

Lives a woman true and fair.

In the second stanza, Donne continues his flow and tells someone that if you are born with sharp mental power having supernatural qualities, you can see things that common people can’t. Walk ten thousand days and nights, approximately equal to 27 years, until your hairs grow white, return and tell me what you have seen. And I strongly argue that you never find such a woman who is beautiful as well as honest. One can discover faithfulness in an ugly woman but not in a beautiful woman. All the seven impossible tasks might be done or could be, but fair and beautiful women are difficult to see anywhere.

Third Stanza

If thou find one, let me know,

Such a pilgrimage was 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, here I come, to two or three.

In the last stanza, the poet seems convinced somehow. He addresses the reader or someone if you are successful in finding a woman with such qualities, let me inform you. I will go on a pilgrimage, but before you write me a letter to tell me, she has changed. If such a woman is near me, I won’t go there to see her because women are frail, and she might flirt with two to three.