Catching a Falling Star

        The famous song by John Donne (England, 1572-1631) is a fantasy poem only in the sense that it is so absurdly cynical as to be pure fantasy.  However, it refers to a number of fantastical themes, and has apparently exerted a strong pull on the imagination of several fantasy writers.

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.

        The poem consists of lists of impossibilities, or fantasies, if you want to look at them that way.  For lovers of fantasy perhaps the appeal is that we do dream of catching falling stars and hearing mermaids singing.  (As for impregnating a mandrake, I have to wonder whether that’s impossible because it’s a plant, or because you can’t get at it without its scream killing you.)  Fantasy writers do like to think of ourselves as being born to strange sights and things invisible to see, which perhaps explains why at least two authors have written books rooted in this poem.  Neil Gaiman’s Stardust is related to the poem primarily in that its action is set in motion by the protagonist setting off to catch a falling star.  There is a callback to the final stanza, however, in that by the time he returns with it to the woman he loves, he finds that she has been untrue.  Howl’s Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones uses even more of the poem, with a series of episodes in which the various impossibilities of the poem occur, signalling the unravelling of a curse based on it.  There are probably numerous other references to this poem in fantasy works, which I either don’t know or am not remembering.  Put it in the comments if you think of any!

        As for Donne’s cynical point, I can attest that it’s fantasy, because I am sitting right here, and I am both true and fair.  So there.

[Pictures: The Great Comet of 1577, wood block print by Jiri Daschitzsky, 1577 (Image from Wikimedia Commons)  As a fun side note, today is the 422nd anniversary of the Great Comet of 1577 being reported by Japanese astronomers.  It was viewed by Tycho Brahe on November 13.

Mandrake root (female variety), wood block print from Ortus sanitatis printed by Johann Prüss, 1499 (Image from Internet Archive);

Delphin, wood block print from Historia aquatilium by Nicolaus Marschalk, 1520 (Image from Bodleian Rare Books).]