to find a chaste woman anywhere in the world.
The poet’s use of a range of unusual images, his
witty and argumentative approach to his theme,
and his sudden turns of thought, stamp the poem
as by Donne.
Author Biography
John Donne was born sometime between January
and June 1572, in London. He was the third of six
children. His father, John Donne, was a success-
ful merchant, and his mother, Elizabeth, was
from a prominent Roman Catholic family. In
the Protestant England of Elizabeth I, Catholics
were a persecuted minority. In 1576, when Donne
was three or four, his father died; his mother
quickly married a prosperous widower. In 1584,
Donne matriculated from Hart Hall, Oxford,
and may later in the decade have attended
Cambridge University. He began writing poetry
while still in his teens, and over the years his
verse circulated in manuscript form. The poem
titled ‘‘Song,’’ beginning ‘‘Go, and catch a falling
star,’’ was likely written when he was a young
man, perhaps in his twenties. To this period also
belong most of his other love poems.
In 1592, Donne was admitted to Lincoln’s
Inn in London to study law, and after receiving
an inheritance from his father’s estate, he lived
quite affluently during the mid-1590s. In 1596,
serving under the Earl of Essex, he joined the
English naval expedition that attacked and cap-
tured Cadiz, Spain. A year later, Donne became
secretary to Sir Thomas Edgerton, and in 1601,
he secretly married Ann More, whom he had met
in 1598. Ann was the daughter of Sir Thomas’s
brother-in-law, and the family did not approve
of the marriage. Donne was dismissed from his
job and imprisoned. Soon he was released from
prison, and with the legality of his marriage rati-
fied, Donne and his wife lived with her cousin, Sir
Francis Wooley, in Pyrford, Surrey, where their
first child was born in 1603. The couple would
produce twelve children, including two that were
stillborn. This included the last child, born in
1617, only five days before Ann’s death.
In Pyrford, Donne practiced as a lawyer but
his income was small. Within a few years he
and his family moved to Mitcham, about twelve
miles from the center of London, and later he also
took lodgings in the Strand, London. During 1608
and 1609, Donne sought more lucrative positions,
such as a secretaryship in Ireland, but he was
unsuccessful. He continued to write, and in 1610,
he publishedPseudo-Martyr, a prose work about
the controversy over Roman Catholicism and
allegiance to the Protestant King James 1. This
won for Donne the favor of the king. The follow-
ing year one of the small number of Donne’s
poems published in his lifetime appeared. This
wasAn Anatomy of the World: The First Anniver-
sary. A year later,Of the Progress of the Soul:
The Second Anniversarywas published. In 1612,
Donne traveled in Europe with his patron, Sir
RobertDrury,andin1614, he became a Member
of Parliament for Taunton.
Donne had converted to Protestantism during
the 1590s, and in 1615, he was ordained a priest
of the Church of England. He was appointed a
royal chaplain, and in 1616, for the first time
he preached at the court of James 1. He became
known for the brilliance of his sermons, and in
1621, he was appointed Dean of St. Paul’s Cathe-
dral in London. Following a serious illness, he
wroteDevotions upon Emergent Occasions,and
published them in 1624.
Donne died on March 31, 1631, after a long
illness. His poems were published posthumously,
in 1633, and were reprinted several times over
the next twenty years.
John Donne(ÓLebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library / Alamy)
Song
