wiser far than I

I missed yesterday because I was feeling like death. I am still kind of feeling like death, but here are two poems that go together, for yesterday and today. I may have posted the first one, back in 2008 when I posted a Renaissance Poetry Miscellany, but it's been a long time, and I've never posted the second. They do, I feel, play best together.

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That 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 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 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 sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

—Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), "The Passionate Shepherd To His Love," in print in 1599, but certainly in manuscript before then, with a terminus ad quem of 1593. Spelling and punctuation modernized, mostly to my preferences.

*

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we shall some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.

There will the river whispering run
Warmed by thy eyes more than the sun,
And there th'enamoured fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee than thou him.

If thou to be so seen be'st loth,
By sun or moon, thou dark'nest both,
And if my heart have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.

Let others freeze with angling-reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treach'rously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare or windowy net:

Let coarse, bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest;
Or, curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes' wand'ring eyes.

For thee, thou need'st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait;
That fish that is not caught thereby,
Alas, is wiser far than I.

—John Donne (1572-1631), "The Bait," uncertain date, but likely 1590s; 1633 in print. Spelling and punctuation modernized to my preferences, but with reference to the Longman Donne (ed. Robin Robbins), which has the most excessive extensive editing of any Donne edition in my possession.

To do this properly I should probably also include The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd, generally attributed to Walter Ralegh. But I like the strict juxtaposition of Marlowe and Donne, which is all one really needs to be like, "SO METAPHYSICAL POETRY."