Poems A for English Literature GRE

Come live with me and be my love,And we will all the pleasures proveThat valleys, groves, hills, 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 fallsMelodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of rosesAnd a thousand fragrant posies,A cap of flowers, and a kirtleEmbroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest woolWhich 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 shepherds' swains shall dance and singFor thy delight each May morning:If these delights thy mind may move,Then live with me and be my love.

To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,Am I thus ample to thy book and fame,While I confess thy writings to be suchAs neither man nor Muse can praise too much.

'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these waysWere not paths I meant unto thy praise;For silliest ignorance on these may light,Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;

Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advanceThe truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,And think to ruin where it seemed to raise.

These are as some infamous bawd or whoreShould praise a matron. What could hurt her more?But thou art proof against them, and, indeed,Above th' ill fortune of them, or the need.

I therefore will begin. Soul of the age!The applause! delight! the wonder of our stage!My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee byChaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie

A little further to make thee a room:Thou art a monument without a tomb,And art alive still while thy book doth live,And we have wits to read and praise to give.

That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses,I mean with great, but disproportioned Muses;For, if I thought my judgment were of years,I should commit thee surely with thy peers,

And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line.And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,From thence to honor thee I would not seek

For names, but call forth thund'ring Aeshylus,Euripides, and Sophocles to us,Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,To life again, to hear thy buskin tread