“What is poetry? Not quite getting what you want, and thereby getting something better.”~Robert Peake, explaining The Pleasures of Frustration in Poetry
Skipping over several centuries between poem #3 and poem #4, we come to Christopher Marlowe’s impassioned invitation from a romantic shepherd to his lady love:
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales 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 flowers, 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.
Thy silver dishes for thy meat
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be
Prepared each day for thee and me.
The shepherd-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.
I must be un-romantic because the poem immediately made me think of this scene from It’s a Wonderful Life. The scene I’m thinking about starts at about the four minute mark:
Isn’t Mr. Stewart aka George Bailey the epitome of the Passionate Shepherd? Sir Walter Raleigh was about as skeptical as Violet in the movie, and he wrote a poem in which the “nymph” responds to Marlowe’s shepherd.
Other responses to/parodies of Marlowe’s poem:
The Bait by John Donne, in which the beloved becomes a fishy sort of bait for unwary poor fishies. “That fish, that is not catch’d thereby/Alas! is wiser far than I.”
Love Under the Republicans (or Democrats) by Ogden Nash, in which economic necessity cramps true love’s song. “Come, live with me and be my love/And we will all the pleasures prove/Of a marriage conducted with economy/In the Twentieth Century Anno Donomy.”
Raleigh Was Right by William Carlos Williams. “We cannot go to the country/for the country will bring us no peace.” Listen to this poem at PennSound.
“Marlowe was killed in 1593 at the age of twenty-nine. There is something in the meteor-like suddenness of his appearance in the skies of poetry, and in the swift flaming of his genius through its course, that seems to make inevitable his violent end. He sums up for us the Renaissance passion for life, sleepless in its search and daring in its grasp after the infinite in power, in knowledge, and in pleasure.” ~A History of English Literature, Seventh Edition by William Vaughn Moody, Robert Morss Lovett, and Fred B. Millett.
The Passionate Shepherd was written in about 1588 or 1589, but published posthumously in 1599.
My grandfather was an artist, and he illuminated this poem. He died when my mother is only seven, but she remembers hiim saying that it was his proposal to my grandmother. It still hangs on out wall – and it always will.
Glad you liked that thought on frustration. More and more I’ve come to realize it also applies to life itself.