Lyric Poem · Love
Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star
by John Donne · 1633
1Go and catch a falling star,
2Get with child a mandrake root,
3Tell me where all past years are,
4Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
5Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
6Or to keep off envy's stinging,
7And find
8What wind
9Serves to advance an honest mind.
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star” by John Donne — quilloak.com/poems/song-go-and-catch-a-falling-star
Quick facts
- Poem
- Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star
- Poet
- John Donne
- Published
- 1633
- Length
- 27 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem, Rhyming Poems
- Themes
- Love, Funny
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 27 lines · 3 stanzas of 9 lines
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- John Donne1572–1631
- Source record
- PoetryDBSong: Go and Catch a Falling Star by john-donne, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- 1633
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 78ec4d4934572b45…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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