John Donne

Although he is too biased against love, the conceits and metaphors Donne employs are novel and fantastic. By making comparisons between finding a true and fair woman and catching a falling star, getting child with a mandrake root, hearing mermaids singing and so on, Donne satirizes bitterly that there is no true and fair woman in the world. There are seven impossibilities in the first stanza:

Go and catch a falling star, 1st impossibility

Get with child a mandrake root, 2nd impossibility

Tell me where all past years are, 3rd impossibility

Or who cleft the Devil¡¯s foot, 4th impossibility

Teach me to hear mermaids singing, 5th impossibility

Or to keep off envy¡¯s stinging, 6th impossibility

And find

What wind

Serves to advance an honest mind. That is exact the effect Donne wants to bring about through his conceits.

These lines shed light on the theme of the poem. 7th impossibility

Later, the last two lines of the second stanza gives the 8th impossibility:

No where

Lives a woman true, and fair. As the poem goes on, readers begin to understand that Donne is listing several impossibilities.