John Donne, as anyone who took more than one or two English Lit courses in their lifetime can tell you, is considered the preeminent representative of the 17th c. metaphysical poets. His poetical works are noted for their metaphorical and sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs and satires.
A number of his works have been set to music by folk-types in recent decades. Putting aside references to his No Man is an Island (Simon and Garfunkel, Tom Hickox, Joan Baez), here’s a couple of our favorites.
GO AND CATCH A FALLING STAR Pentangle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMhRfDzQadM
A light-hearted and satirical lyric that harbors genuine melancholy, bitterness, and cynicism towards women and relationships. set to music by Bert Jansch and John Renbourne, and performed by the mega popular British folk/blues/jazz fusion group Pentangle.
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,
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, No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.
GO AND CATCH A FALLING STAR Short Tailed Snails
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0dM_SVoe-w
A very different treatment of Go and Catch a Falling Star, arranged and sung by a female vocalist like a formal medieval ballad. Short Tailed Snails describes itself as a “a Kraut Folk band from Heidelberg Germany playing a mixture of German Folk, Old Music and World Music.” While attractive musically, it strays from Donne’s theme considerably.
TO HIS MISTRESS, GOING TO BED Joel Spencer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-8683vgO90&t=17s
There is little more than playful romantic puffery in this poem which outlines a lover’s increasingly rationalisms and pleas that his mistress let him see her naked. Sung by Joel Spencer, a relatively unknown folk singer with a Youtube account that features about a dozen songs set to music from such classic poets as Donne, Keats, Yeats and Wallace Stevens.
Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tir’d with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven’s Zone glistering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING Pere Vilanova
A metaphysical poem exploring the nature of enduring love. True love, says Donne, transcends physical separation and offers enduring spiritual connection. From the album All the Heavy Days are Over by Barcelona’s Pere Vilanova, a musician and poet who has published 8 albums, 2 books of poetry and has translated the French poet Arthur Rimbaud.
we, by a love so much refined
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion.
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
RADIO POET!QUE: A Spoken Word Radio Review 