The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

COME live with me and be my Love, And we will all the pleasures prove The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd That hills and valleys, dale and field, And all the craggy mountains yield. If all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue, There will we sit upon the rocks These pretty pleasures might me move And see the shepherds feed their flocks, To live with thee and be thy love. By shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals. Time drives the flocks from field to fold When rivers rage and rocks grow cold, There will I make thee beds of roses And Philomel becometh dumb; And a thousand fragrant posies, The rest complains of cares to come. A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle. The flowers do fade, and wanton fields To wayward winter reckoning yields; A gown made of the finest wool A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Which from our pretty lambs we pull, Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall, Fair linèd slippers for the cold, With buckles of the purest gold. Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses, Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies A belt of straw and ivy buds Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten-- With coral clasps and amber studs: In folly ripe, in reason rotten. And if these pleasures may thee move, Come live with me and be my Love. Thy belt of straw and ivy buds, Thy coral clasps and amber studs, Thy silver dishes for thy meat All these in me no means can move As precious as the gods do eat, To come to thee and be thy love. Shall on an ivory table be Prepared each day for thee and me. But could youth last and love still breed, Had joys no date nor age no need, The shepherd swains shall dance and sing Then these delights my mind may move For thy delight each May-morning: To live with thee and be thy love. If these delights thy mind may move, Then live with me and be my Love. Sonnet 30 Edmund Spenser Sonnet 29 William Shakespeare

My love is like to ice, and I to fire: When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, how comes it then that this her cold so great I all alone beweep my outcast state, is not dissolv'd through my so hot desire, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, but harder grows, the more I her entreat? And look upon myself and curse my fate, Or how comes it that my exceeding heat Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, is not delayed by her heart-frozen cold, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, but that I burn much more in boiling sweat, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, and feel my flames augmented manifold? With what I most enjoy contented least; What more miraculous thing may be told Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, that fire, which all thing melts, should harden ice: Haply I think on thee--and then my state, and ice which is congealed with senseless cold, Like to the lark at break of day arising should kindle fire by wonderful device? From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate; Such is the pow'r of love in gentle mind For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings, that it can alter all the course of kind. That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare Sonnet 75 Edmund Spenser Let me not to the marriage oft true minds One day I wrote her name upon the strand, Admit impediments. Love is not love But came the waves and washed it away: Which alters when it alteration finds, Again I wrote it with a second hand, Or bends with the remover to remove: But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. O, no! It is an ever-fixèd mark, Vain man, said she, that doest in vain assay That looks on tempests and is never shaken; A mortal thing so to immortalize, It is the star to every wandering bark, For I myself shall like to this decay, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. And eek my name be wiped out likewise. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise Within his bending sickle's compass come; To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, My verse your virtues rare shall eternize, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. And in the heavens write your glorious name. If this be error, and upon me proved, Where whenas Death shall all the world subdue, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. Out love shall live, and later life renew.

Sonnet 90 Petrarch Sonnet 18 Shakespeare She used to let her golden hair fly free. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? For the wind to toy and tangle and molest; Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Her eyes were brighter than the radiant west. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, (Seldom they shine so now.) I used to see And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Pity look out of those deep eyes on me. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, (“It was false pity,” you would now protest.) And often is his gold complexion dimm’d; I had love’s tinder heaped within my breast; And every fair from fair sometime declines, What wonder that the flame burnt furiously? By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d; She did not walk in any mortal way, But thy eternal summer shall not fade But with angelic progress; when she spoke, Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Unearthly voices sang in unison. Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: She seemed divine among the dreary folk Of earth. You say she is not so today? So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, Well, though the bow’s unbent, the wound bleeds on. So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Sonnet 181 Petrarch Love made a snare, a beautiful device Sonnet 130 Shakespeare Woven of gold and pearls, and this he laid My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Twined in the grass, under the sorrowful shade Coral is far more red than her lips' red; Of the laurel tree to which I sacrifice. If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; Sweetmeats were strewn therein, of greatest price, If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head; Though bitter at the core. I took them unafraid. Ever unearthly-lovely music played, I have seen roses damasked, red and white, Unheard since Adam’s hour in Paradise. But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some pérfumes is there more delight The radiance of her eyes outdid the sun, Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. Transfiguring the earth in holy blaze. Then with her ivory hand she twitched the rope! I love to hear her speak, yet well I know And so I fell in the net, and was undone That music hath a far more pleasing sound. By her angelic words, her darling ways; I grant I never saw a goddess go; Also by pleasure, by desire; by hope. My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.