Christopher Marlowe
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
And all the craggy mountains yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sings madrigals.
And I will make three 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 fines 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.
The 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.
Meet the author...
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1953)
Though not the first English poet to write in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter), Christopher Marlowe's brilliant use of it in his plays established blank verse as the preeminent meter for verse drama and ultimately for epic poetry in English. Marlowe is the author of one of the world's immortal tragedies, Dr. Faustus, as well as several other notable plays and poems.
Born in Canterbury, Marlowe was the son of a shoemaker. He went to Cambridge University on a scholarship usually awarded to students studying for the ministry.However, he spent much of his time writing plays and serving as a government agent. He never took holy orders. He is, indeed, reputed to have been an atheist, or at least to have held highly unorthodox religious views.
While at Cambridge, Marlowe wrote Tamburlaine, the play that made the public aware of his dazzling abilities. It dramatizes thye exploits for a fourteenth-century Scythian shepherd who conquered much of the known world. As Marlowe portrays him, Tamburlaine personifies energy and ambition and is thus a character eminently suited for the dramatist's powerful blank verse. In the remaining siz years of his life, Marlowe write five more plays, including Dr. Faustus and a sequel to Tamburlaine. On May 30, 1593, he was killed by a dagger thrust in a tavern. His death may have been the result of a flight over the bill, or it may have been a political assassination.
Marlowe's fame rests primarily on his plays, especially on his "mighty line," as Ben Jonson described his dramatic blank verse.Dr. Faustus has been a classic of dramatic literature for four hundred years. However, Marlowe's nondramatic poetry aline would be enough to secure him a permanent place in English Literature. His Hero and Leander is one of the finest narrative poems ever written in English, and " The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" is one of the best known and most popular lyrics of the English Renaissance.
Task I
Find in the ff. options listed on the right side the word that best described by the following:
____________1. hollows, valleys kirtle
____________2. songs with parts several voices with prove
no musical accompaniment madrigals
____________3. bouquets posies
____________4. country youth dales
____________5. shirt swains
____________6. experience
Task 2
What qualities in it might inspire someone to set the picture into music.
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Source:Insights IV, Englishworksheets pp.93-94.
