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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.

10If thou be'st born to strange sights,

11Things invisible to see,

12Ride ten thousand days and nights,

13Till age snow white hairs on thee;

14Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me

15All strange wonders that befell thee,

16And swear

17No where

18Lives a woman true, and fair.

19If thou find'st one, let me know,

20Such a pilgrimage were sweet;

21Yet do not, I would not go,

22Though at next door we might meet:

23Though she were true, when you met her,

24And last, till you write your letter,

25Yet she

26Will be

27False, ere I come, to two or three.

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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
The poem’s silhouette — approximate syllables per line, measured from the text above. Even bars mean a measured line; ragged bars mean the poem sets its own widths.

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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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