Beauty sat bathing by a spring
Where fairest shades did hide her,
which reappears in his translation of the Castilian romance Primelion.
In Marlowe's 'Passionate Shepherd to his Love,' of which England's Helicon supplies one of three texts[[129]], we come to what is, with the possible exception of Lycidas alone, the most subtly modulated specimen of pastoral verse in English. So far as internal evidence is concerned the poem has absolutely nothing but its own perfection to connect it with the name of Marlowe; it is utterly unlike all other verse, dramatic, narrative, or lyric, ascribed to him. An admirable eclectic text, which exhibits to the full the delicacy of the rhythm, has been prepared by Mr. Bullen in his edition of Marlowe's works. It would be impossible not to quote the piece in full:
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and vallies, 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[[130]] 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 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.
The popularity of this poem was testified by its widespread influence on the poets of the day. England's Helicon contains 'the Nymphs reply,' commonly attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh, and also a long imitation; Donne wrote a piscatory version, and Herrick paid it the sincerest form of flattery, while less distinct reminiscences are common in the poetry of the time. Yet Kit Marlowe's verses stand unrivalled.
The pastoral influence in Shakespeare's verse, both lyric and dramatic, is too obvious to need more than passing notice. Every reader will recall 'Who is Sylvia,' from the Two Gentlemen, and 'It was a lover and his lass,' the song of which, in Touchstone's opinion, 'though there was no great matter in the ditty, yet the tune was very untuneable,' or again the famous speech of the chidden king:
O God! methinks it were a happy life,
To be no better than a homely swain;
(3 Henry VI, II. v. 21.)
and Arthur's exclamation:
By my christendom
So I were out of prison and kept sheep,
I should be as merry as the day is long.
(K. John, IV. i. 16.)
One poem, bearing a certain resemblance to verses of Barnfield's already discussed, may be quoted here. It was originally printed in the fourth act of Love's Labour's Lost in 1598, reappeared in the Passionate Pilgrim in 1599, and again in England's Helicon in 1600.