Stardust
: Epigraph

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 replace

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

Nowhere

Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou replace’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, 1572–1631