Song -- Go and Catch a Falling

¶ … Song -- Go and catch a falling star" by John Donne

It was said that Donne's poem was likely written when he was in a drunken mood and possibly, too, when he was rejected by his lover or disappointed in his love. Describing the difficulty of finding virtuous women in the world, Donne uses the similes of catching falling stars, pregnancies with mandrake roots and teaching mermaids to sing. "Ride ten thousand days and nights" says he, "till age snow white hairs on thee / Thou, when thou returns't, will tell me / all strange wonders that befell the / and swear / no where / lives a woman true and fair" (lines 12-18). A true Schopenhauer! In his final stanza, Donne concludes that even were this woman to live next door, by the time he would manage to meet her she would have succeeded in being unfaithful.

Donne's historical period (the late Middle Ages) is evident in this poem. Fundamentalist Christianity was the mainstay of Donne's time and a major teaching of religion was the Church's stance on women: that faithlessness was common, that women were to be distrusted, and that it was better to remain celibate.

Allusions to religion appear thrice in this poem: the "Devil's foot' and 'pilgrimage' as well as 'fallen angels'. It may be that Donne is crafting a parallel between the religious quest and between the quest for physical / feminine consistency and satisfaction. Whereas metaphysical purity in religion may be found, in the world of woman (Donne seems to be saying), divine images are too human to be ideal (hence you have 'Devil's foot' / 'a falling star' / and 'fallen angels'. Love as idealized spiritual quest is corrupted by physical lust and unfaithfulness.

The poem is structured in such a way that the climax build up to a crescendo as it proceeds. The first stanza 'Go catch a fallen star' leaves us wanting to know more and leads us into the world of impossibility ignorant of Donne's intention: "Go and catch a falling star / Get with child a mandrake root / Tell me where all past years are / Or who cleft the Devils' foot etc." (Lines 1-5). Only in line 6 does he indicate that it is his besotted envy that is driving him to write this poem and that, most likely, this envy comes through disappointed love (line 13). The conclusion of the first stanza turns from the metaphysically absurd to reality, the element of envy.

The second stanza sharpens the suspense. This is typical of Dunne's poetry. Injected with humor, and occasionally cynicism, Donne compels the reader's curiosity until the end where, in the final stanza, Donne compares the impossibility of accomplishing or seeing these phenomena to the rarity of a faithful woman and then, assuming an opponent's point-of-view, he asserts that even were such a woman to exist, she would be faithless by the time he reached her. Metrically, the stanzas indicate a syllabic pattern of line length (7777 88-22 8) and display a consistent stress pattern. The structure is taut. All three stanzas have a similar rhyme scheme (ABAB CC DDD), but in the second and third stanza you have one rhyme sound that crops up more than is expected (second stanza: EFEF FF GGG; third stanza: HIHI JJ FFF) -- F is overly common and increasingly so. This may be because Donne is approaching his denouement. Aside from rhetorical purpose, the repetition also serves to integrate the poem.