Wednesday, June 4, 2014

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love and the Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd


The Passionate Shepherd to His Love and the Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd







The Passionate Shepherd to His Love  by Christopher Marlowe  1599 
Come live with me and be my love,  And we will all the pleasures prove  That valleys, groves, hills, and fields  Woods or steepy mountain yields
And we will sit upon the rocks,  Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks  By shallow rivers to whose falls  Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses  And a thousand fragrant posies,  A cap of flower, and a kirtle  Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool  Which from our pretty lambs we pull;  Fair lined slippers for the cold  With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,  With coral clasps and amber studs;  And if these pleasures may thee move,  Come live with me and be my love.
The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing  For thy delight each May morning:  If these delights thy mind may move,  Then live with me and be my love.
The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd  by Sir Walter Raleigh  1600 
If all the world and love were young,  And truth in every shepherd's tongue,  These pretty pleasures might me move  To live with thee and be thy love.
Time drives the flocks from field to fold,  When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;  And Philomel becometh dumb;  The rest complain of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields  To wayward winter reckoning yields;  A honey tongue, a heart of gall,  Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy bed of roses,  Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,  Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,  In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,  Thy coral clasps and amber studs,  All these in me no means can move  To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last and love still breed,  Had joys no date nor age no need,  Then these delights my mind might move  To live with thee and be thy love.

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