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"Song: Go and Catch a Falling
Star" by John Donne 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.
John Donne was a metaphysical poet
from the 17th century. Many of his poems are famous, and many
quoted, but none so much as "Song: Go and Catch a Falling
Star" and also and his work, Meditation 17. In that work, he
writes, "No man is an island, entire of himself..." and
"For whom the bell tolls...".
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