Come live with me and be my love

Come live with me and be my love. We will fulfill our pleasures in the valleys, the hills, the fields, the woods or on the steep mountain slopes.
We will sit on the rocks and see the shepherds when they feed their flocks. We will sit by the shallow rivers, where in their falls, the birds sing sweet melodies.

I will make for you a bed of roses with a thousand fragrant posies. I will make for you a cap of flowers and a tunic embroidered with myrtle leaves.

I will make for you a gown of the finest wool pulled from our pretty lambs. I will make for you fur-lined slippers with buckles of the purest gold to protect your feet from the cold.

Also a belt of straw and ivy-buds with coral clasps and yellow studs. If these pleasures move your heart, then come, live with me and be my love.

Each May morning, the shepherd boys shall dance and sing to your delight. If these delights move your mind, then live with me and be my love.


~Christopher Marlowe (1564–93)

Original poem 'The Passionate Shepherd to His Love'
at http://www.bartleby.com/101/121.html