Till age snow white haires on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell mee
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And sweare
No where
Lives a woman true, and faire.
If thou findst one, let mee know,
Such a Pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet doe not, I would not goe,
Though at next doore wee might meet,
Though shee were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet shee
Will bee
False, ere I come, to two, or three.
Even if there’s an honest woman next door Donne believes she will be unfaithful by the time he goes to see her. This is, of course, a paradox. 
 As one commentator said, ‘Not the most feminist lines John Donne ever wrote.’ 
 It could be said that the poem lets the reader down. The quest for an honest woman should end with  triumphant success, and it almost does in the third stanza, but still ends on a negative note. This point, that the ending of Donne’s poems are disappointing, has been discussed by  Christopher Ricks in his ‘Essays in Appreciation’, Oxford University Press 
 Of course, Donne doesn’t include in his argument women who are plain. Can we assume they would be true, if only because they can find no other man? This isn’t touched on by Donne, perhaps because he is too arrogant to even consider loving an ugly woman.
Song