Part 42

The line is imperfect. We should have expected "at night wild beasts were seen" ("silvisque feras sub nocte relictis").

Old ed. "Sibils."

Shrieked.

"Gelidas Anienis ad undas."

"Or LunÊ"--marginal note in old ed.

The original has "rapi."

Old ed. "wash'd."

Portendeth.

Here Marlowe quite deserts the original--

"pars Êgra et marcida pendet, Pars micat, et celeri venas movet improba pulsu."

"Numerisque moventibus astra."--The word "planeting" was, I suppose, coined by Marlowe. I have never met it elsewhere.

So Dyce.--Old ed. "radge." (The original has "et incerto discurrunt sidera motu.")

"Omnis an effusis miscebitur unda venenis."--Dyce suggests that Marlowe's copy read "pruinis."

The original has "Aquarius."--Ganymede was changed into the sign Aquarius: see Hyginus' Poeticon Astron. II. 29.

Claws.

A MÊnad.--Old ed. "MÊnus."

The original has "NubiferÊ."

Old ed. "hence."

THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE.

THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE.

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 cup of flowers and a kirtle Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wooll Which from our pretty lambs we pull; Fair-linËd slippers for the cold, With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy-buds, With coral clasps and amber studs; An 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.

FOOTNOTES:

This delightful pastoral song was first published, without the fourth and sixth stanzas, in The Passionate Pilgrim, 1599. It appeared complete in England's Helicon, 1600, with Marlowe's name subscribed. By quoting it in the Complete Angler, 1653, Izaak Walton has made it known to a world of readers.