B) How do language and verse form contribute to meaning in this poem
In the first stanza Donne uses very commanding language, four lines out of nine begin with an imperative, and this shows his commanding, intellectual persona and his attitude towards women. In the first stanza Donne presents us fantastical images of various impossibilities which contribute meaning to his opinion of woman.
The first sentence is a command: "Goe and catch a falling star," and an impossible one, for how can one catch a star? The word "falling" suggests a gradual fading away of the virtuosity of woman, rather than fallen, which would be irretrievable, there is a sense that there is a chance, but it is narrow. It is interesting that Donne is using the conventionally romantic image of a star in defiance, referencing it to the ‘Divel,’ as Lucifer was a fallen angel, and the stars are often symbolic of Angels and heaven, this devil imagery perhaps shows his opinion of the duplicity of women.
Donne builds on the idea of the impossible in his second line tells us ‘Get with child a mandrake roote’ A mandrake is a plant which resembles the human form and is a mild narcotic, this may reference his opinion that women are like a drug.
It is a mocking cynical poem about women, Donne uses clichéd – love poem lines such as ‘ride ten thousand daies and nights / till age snow white hairs on thee’ to ridicule the love poems of the time. He convolutes the image of snow white and places it upon the balding head of some old geezer, twisting the idea of an innocent, virtuous woman.
The poem follows a rather odd structural pattern, each stanza follows a 6-3 pattern with the first 6 following an ABAB rhyming couplet while the end 3 lines are a rhyming triplet. The first 6 lines often make quite complex statements about how Donne is feeling – he uses the head to decode the heart - while the finishing triplet shows an insistence of opinion, it emphasizes the points being made but also creates a lilting rhythm to the end of each verse, like the chorus to a song.
C) Write about how a more positive attitude to women is expressed in one or two of Donne’s other poems.
In Donne’s poem ‘Loves Growth’ he feels very different about women, and in particular one woman. The poem is a lot more complex in length and structure than ‘song,’ he is trying to express many points about how his love works. Throughout most of this poem he uses rhyming couplets throughout most of the poem in line 7/10, sorrow / borrow he skips 2 lines to make a ABBA rhyme, this shows that his language is more important than the rhythm in this poem. This is contrast to ‘song’ which uses and ABABABCCC throughout the poem, with a much shorter line length, which emphasizes Donne’s own feelings of boredom and irritation.
Donne tries to remove his love from the metaphysical by writing it’s a ‘mixt of all stuffes’ it ‘not so pure and abstract as they use.’ He is trying to ‘element’ love so he can defing it and describe it, he wants to know how love works. Donne compares his love to the seasons, his love becoming no greater but more eminent as the spring time arrives, as ‘Starres by the Sunne are not inlarg’d but showne.’ Donne constantly refers to this image throughout the poem comparing it to ‘Princes in times of action get / New taxes, and remit them not in peace’ – in these lines of the poem he is comparing his love to a very real thing – taxes, again trying to remove his love from the world of the metaphysical.
Donne compares his love to water rippling out wards ‘Produc’d by one, love such additions take.’ One drop in a pond will cause rippling outwards – it continues to grow. He compares the circles to spheres of the heavens, but he says ‘they are all concentrique unto thee.’ This is a great metaphor for defining love, he feels that his lover is the centre on the heavens and outshines everything, the years passing to nothing bar ‘adde to love new heate.’
His love may increase through springtime but never abates through bad times, “No winter shall abate the springs encrease.’ Donne suggests that it cannot abate, he compares his growing love as too the infiniteness of the sky and the stars, which would have been never anything less than infinite in those times. Here we can see Donne as a simplistic adolescent, when he is in love he can never see it ending, while when he is feeling bad all women are evil and he will never go out with one again.