Thanks to an illustration in an article about botanical gardens in the latest New York Review of Books, one of Donne’s verses has become a great deal less recondite.
Go and catch a meteor,
Impregnate a mandrake root,
Tell me, where are years of yore,
Or why a hoof’s the devil's foot,
Or why, though I’ve heard mermaids singing,
'Tis not at me their songs they’re flinging,
And find
Some kind
Help for an unretentive mind.