catch a falling star
hear mermaids singing – tell me …
where all past years are
Adapted from “Song” by John Donne, first published in 1633, as printed in The Oxford book of English verse, 1250-1918, New York, Oxford University Press, 1939.
The first stanza reads:
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.
With seven children in our family, my wife and I watched a lot of Nickelodeon and I thought a lot of those shows had underlying themes that were for those parents who like us, ended up watching those goofy shows.
The cartoon ‘Hey Arnold‘ about a kid with a football shaped head and his adventures growing up comes to mind.
The Grandma in that show would have a line here and there that just stopped you dead.
From “You’d knock down the statue of Liberty if it got a gray hair!” to “Against the law of the king, perhaps. Against the law of common decency? I think not!” you never knew what she would say.
In one episode Arnold was trying to get folks interested in saving an old building or something, I cannot remember what, and in the middle of the night, Grandma wakes him and drags him yelling, “Come on, let’s go grasp some straws!” and they go out to battle for justice and truth.
That is me today.
So so so much.
Michelle Obama’s call to DO … SOMETHING resonated in me to my toes.
… but what?
Mr. Donne writing almost 400 years ago put it this way.
Go and catch a falling star.
Tell me where all past years are.
Teach me to hear mermaids singing.
[Teach me] to keep off envy’s stinging.
Find what wind serves to advance an honest mind.
Come on, let’s go grasp some straws!
No Haiku For You 