Donne - Poetry

For our seventeenth poem, we have some John Donne with a poem called 'Go and Catch a Falling Star'.

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.

If thou be'st 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,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'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.

The first stanza and most of the second one seem to be instructions, maybe to someone very young, to go out and seek wonders.  But then we have the focus on 'a woman true and fair'.  Donne seems very certain that any such woman would lose truth and fairness before he met her.  Which is a wee bit dark.
And it casts a different light on the first parts.  Instead of saying 'go out and seek wonders', it is now saying 'you can search the whole wide world but never find an honest woman'.  And it's harder to think of that as going out to a young someone.
What an amazing little poem.