Lyric Poem · Love
Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star
by John Donne · 1633
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.
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“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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