Go and Catch A Falling Star Poem Explanation

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Telegram
• YouTube

Author: John Donne

(22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631)

He was the son John Donne and Elizabeth Heywood. He was born into a racusant Roman Catholic family. The Practice of Roman Catholicism was illegal in England. In 1576 when he was four years old and his father passed away. He studied at Hart Hall (Hartford College, Oxford) for three years. Later he studied at the University of Cambridge for three years. Though he studied at famous schools and universities, he could not obtain any degree from either university.

He was a clerk (clergy), poet, scholar, soldier, secretary and pamphleteer.

He published anti – catholic pamphlets.

Donne belonged to metaphysical school of poets. The critic Samuel Johnson in his book ‘Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets’ coined the term ‘metaphysical poets’ to describe a loose group of 17th century English poets.

John Donne was the founder of the ‘metaphysical school of poetry.’ Dr. Samuel Johnson gave this term. The metaphysical poets laughed at women’s fashion, weakness and faithlessness.

Donne converted himself from Catholicism into Anglican Church. Having converted to Anglicanism he focused his literary career on religious poems. He became famous for sermons and religious poems. Donne wrote works challenging to death. The fear that it inspired many people. On the grounds of his belief that those who die are sent to Heaven to live endless. “Death Be Not Proud.” A Holy Sonnet X is the best instance of this.

Donne wrote his most of the poems on women and love. He has cynic and misogynistic views in his poetry.

John Donne worked under three Kings:

1. Elizabeth – I (1558 – 1603)
2. James – I (1603 – 1625)
3. Charles – I (1625 – 1649)

John Donne used the term ‘sex’ in his poem ‘Ecstasy’ for the first time.

Dryden wrote of Donne in 1693 “He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses.”

“The Metaphysical Poets” essay was written by T.S. Eliot.

Discourse on Satires was written by John Donne. Donne had more poetic originality than philosophical. He wrote sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs and satires and sermons.

“All the heterogeneous ideas were yoked by violence together” – Samuel Johnson

Leishman the modern critic stated, “Donne is the monarch of wit.”

Metaphysical poets:

1. Richard Crashaw
2. Thomas Carew
3. George Herbert
4. Henry Vaughan
5. Abraham Cowley
6. Andrew Marvell
7. John Cleveland

Metaphysical poets are known for their ability to startle the reader and coax new perspective through paradoxical images, subtle argument, inventive syntax and imagery form using conceit. They were the men of learning. They never showed off their learning & knowledge.

Meant by Metaphysical or Metaphysics:

‘Meta’ means ‘beyond’ and the physical means ‘physical nature’ so metaphysical poetry means the poetry that goes beyond the world of the understanding and to explore the spiritual world.

Characteristics of Metaphysical Poetry:

The metaphysical poetry is honest along with unconventional. It reveals the poet’s sense of the complexities and contradictions of life. It is absorbed in thoughts of death, physical love and religious devotion.

Donne spent much of his inheritance on women, literature, pastimes and travel.

He secretly married Anne More just before Christmas in 1601. Donne and Anne More had 12 children in sixteen years of marriage. Anne passed away after five days of giving birth to the twelfth child Donne was greatly shocked on the death of his wife Anne and mourned her deeply. He wrote of his love and loss in his 17th Holy Sonnet. Three of his children died before they were ten. On the death of children, Donne was in despair. He himself drove to suicide but defend himself by writing Baithanatos.

He was elected as an MP (Member of Parliament) in 1602 for Brackley and in 1614 for Taunton. Donne wrote two Anti Catholic polemics Pseudo Martyr and Ignatius His Conclave for Morton.

King James I became happy with the work of Donne and urged him to take Holy Orders instead of Reinstating him at the court. On the wishes of the king he was ordained priest in the Church of England.

He became Dean of St. Paul in 1621. He remained on this position until his death in 1631. On curing from the thphus disease, Donne wrote a series of meditations and prayers on health. Meditations XVII (17th) contains the well known phrase “No Man Is An Island” originally “No Man Is An Island.” and “For Whom the Bell Tells.” Both the famous phrases were given by John Donne. His early career was notable for erotic poetry.

Famous works of John Donne:

1. The Flea: It is an erotic metaphysical poem Publsihed in 1633 posthumously. The Flea sucks blood from the lover and beloved. It serves extended metaphor for the relationship between them. The speaker tries to convince a lady to hove sex with him. If their blood mingles in the flea that is innocent then sexual mingling would also be innocent. Important line in ‘The Flea’ is “Three crimes in killing three.”
2. ‘An Anthology of the World”: Donne wrote this poem in the memory of Elizabeth Drury.
3. The Canonization: This poem was published in 1633. This examplifies Donne’s wit and irony. The relation of this poem is with the complexities of romantic love. In this sense love is asceticism. This ist he major conceit in this poem.
4. A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning: It is a metaphysical poem. It is a love poem of 36 lines. It was published in the 1633 in the collection ‘Songs and Sonnets.’ Donne uses drafting compass as an analogy for the couple. As the compasses are two legs joined with a point. He symbolizes the two legs of the compasses with the lover and the beloved. This is the best known conceit in English poetry.
5. The Sun Rising: The Sunne Rising thirty line love poem. This is a great example of inverted aubaude. It is a morning love song. This poem has three stanzas. It was published in 1633.

Some other important works by John Donne:

1. The Courtier’s Library
2. The First Anniversary: An Anatomy of the World
3. The Second Anniversary: Of the Progress of the Soul
4. Devotions upon emergent Occasions
5. The Good Morrow
6. Holy Sonnets
7. As Due By Mary Titles
8. The Sun Rising
9. The Dream
10. Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed
11. Batter My Heart, Three Person’d God
12. Poems
13. Juvenelia: or Certain Paradoxes and Problems
14. LXXX Sermons
15. Fifty Sermons
16. Essays in Divinity (1651)
17. Letters to Several Persons of Honour
18. XXVI Sermons
19. A Hymn to God the Father
20. A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day
21. A Lecture upon the Shadow
22. The Tripple Fool
23. The Relic
24. The Progress of the Soul

Carpe Diem: This phrase means ‘seize the day’. This phrase was used by Roman poet Horace. Donne encourages the lady to focus on the present day and time versus saving herself for the afterlife. Here Donne wants to show the erotic without using the word sex.

Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s elegy on the death of Donne – “Elegy for Doctor Donne”

“The Great Elegy for John Donne.” – by Joseph Brodsky

“Take Head of Loving Me” – A novel about John Donne by Elizabeth Grey Vining.

“The lady and the Poet” a novel by Maeve Haran.

Ben Jonson judged Donne: “The first poet in the world in some things.”

Samuel Johnson commented in Lies of the Poets – “The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons and allusions.”

Dr. Johnson – The metaphysical poets were men of learning and to show their learning was their whole endeavour. They copied neither nature nor life.

Go and Catch A Falling Star

About the Poem:

Total lines : 27

Stanzas : 3 (9 lines each stanza)

Trochiach Tetrameter

Iambic Monometer (7 & 8 lines)

Rhyme Scheme: ab ab cc ddd

Stanza 1

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.

Explanation: The very first line of the poem prepares the readers for a lot of ideas. The first line has the first impossible task out of all seven impossible tasks given in this poem. In the first line Donne says that catching a falling star is an impossible task as finding a true and fair woman is impossible too.

The first line has abrupt opening. It is a Herculean task to make mandrake pregnant. It introduces a note of sexual menace that is very important. The plant of mandrake root produced flowers that developed into fruit named Satan’s apple. As the poet has given seven impossible tasks in this poem, the third impossible task is to tell where the past years have gone. And the fourth task is to find out who cleft the devil’s foot.

If we are search it that foot we are not only getting pretty close to decide the enemy of humankind. In other words devil’s hoof is like goat’s hoof that has been cleft. As the next task to teach me to hear mermaids singing because one has not seen the mermaid and nor has listened to the mermaid’s singing. This line is the case of allusion. A reference to the sirens of Greek mythology were actually half bird.

The mermaid refers to a creature that is half woman and half fish. The expression in this line goes beyond the human capabilities. As the next and the sixth task is to keep off the envy’s stinging. To keep off the pain of envious and jealous from others is so impossible as to find a true and fair woman.

This is a natural instinct that cannot be kept off. The last and the seventh task falls in the ninth line. The speaker asks his listeners to figure out what kind of wind fills the honesty to mind of a person. What wind can make a person honest, faithful, loyal and truthful. Honest mind refers to the honesty and honesty here refers to the sexual honesty.

Stanza 2

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.

Explanation: In the second stanza the poet reveals the true purpose. He complains about the way that he has been treated unfairly by women and says that if a man born with the power to see strange sights and invisible objects he may ride ten thousand days and nights. He can travel all over the world till his hair becomes grey. But he cannot see a true and faithful woman. On his returning he tells me the wonderful things and happenings. And he will not be able to swear that wherever he found a true and fair woman.

Stanza 3

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.

Explanation: In these lines the poet states that if one finds a true and fair woman, than he will go on a ‘pilgrimage’ to find her. He knows that it can never be; he would find a true and fair woman, so he will not go on a pilgrimage. If the next door the poet finds a woman that would be true and fair, at the time of meeting the woman is faithful but she cannot be faithful for a long time and by the time the man writes her a letter she would have been false. She would have made two or three lovers and at last she proves herself untrue.

Poetic devices used in this poem:

1. Till ages snow white – Metaphor
2. Ride ten thousand days and nights – Hyperbole
3. Till age snow white hairs on thee – Hyperbole
4. Things invisible to see – Paradox
5. Such a pilgrimage were sweet – Metaphysical conceit
6. Falling star (falling of an angle) – Metaphor
7. Mandrake root – Allusion (From Greek Mythology)

Other links from this website:

Idioms and Phrases