Passionate Shepherd (after verse 20).
"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."
Nymph's Reply (after verse 20).
"What should we talk of dainties then
Of better meat than's fit for men?
These are but vain, that's only good
Which God hath blest and sent for food."
In the Roxburghe Collection of Ballads (i. 205) is a street ballad in which these two songs are united and entitled A most excellent ditty of the Lover's promises to his beloved, with the Lady's prudent answer to her Love. The verses referred to above as added by Walton are here printed, but they take the place of verses 17 to 20 of each song respectively.
Mr. Chappell and Dr. Rimbault have both drawn attention to the proofs of the popularity of Marlowe's song to be found in out of the way places. In Choice, Chance, and Change, or Conceits in their Colours (1606), Tidero being invited to live with his friend, replies, "Why, how now? do you take me for a woman, that you come upon me with a ballad of Come live with me and be my love?" In The World's Folly, 1609, there is the following passage: "But there sat he, hanging his head, lifting up the eyes, and with a deep sigh singing the ballad of Come live with me and be my love, to the tune of Adew my deere." Nicholas Breton refers to it in 1637 as "the old song," but Walton considered it fresh enough to insert in his Angler in 1653, although Marlowe had then been dead sixty years.]
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we wil all the pleasures prove
That hils and vallies, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.