Song

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'est 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.

~John Donne

The first stanza of this poem was in a book called Howl's Castle that I read years ago. It's a really good book actually; there's wizards and enchanted things and a demon that lives in the fireplace called Calcifer. And they pretty much describe Howl himself as a hottie, even if this is a book for youngerish teenagers. I actually don't know what age it's written for, since I never stuck to one reading level. I'm probably going to get it out again and reread it. It even has a sequel!
But I digress. There's this whole part of the book about this spell or curse that involves Howl. The spell is really the first stanza, it just wasn't credited so I thought the author made it up. It actually gets acted out in the book....Calcifer was a falling star, and Howl gave him his human heart to keep him alive...he ends up telling the truth for once to Sophie while they're in this fierce windstorm...it all plays out.
Anyway, I was quite surprised to spot the whole thing in a book of John Donne's poetry that I was reading the other day. There's a whole section of this book devoted to love poems, of which this song is one. But if you really read it, you notice the last few lines don't exactly sound loving. If you find someone true and fair, the narrator doesn't want to know about it, even if he might find her next door, because even if she were true to the person that found her, she would show her true colors eventually and be unfaithful to others. Hmmm...doesn't exactly sound like "My love is like a red, red rose", does it? Turns out every one of this fellow's so-called love poems revolve around the fact that Love Sucks. Or, more correctly, Women Are Evil and They Suck. They all end with him getting his heart trampled over, women being cruel and heartless bitches, and life generally being unpleasant. Aside from that, it's really good poetry.
Amazing, Donne had a long happy marriage to this woman named Anne, to whom he wrote really touching love poems that never make it into the books alongside the spicier, women-are-whores stuff. Apparently the works we see are those that reflect the cynicism that resulted from his earlier encounters with the female sex. He must have met some mighty nasty dames to be that angry about life.