"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love", known for its first line "Come live with me and be my love", is a poem written by the English poet Christopher Marlowe and published in 1599 . In addition to being one of the best-known love poems in the English language, it is considered one of the earliest examples of the pastoral style of British poetry in the late Renaissance period. It is composed in iambic tetrameter , with seven stanzas each composed of two rhyming couplets. It is often used for scholastic purposes for its regular meter and rhythm.
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (unknown date), stanzas 1 and 2. Compare: "To shallow rivers, to whose falls / Melodious birds sings madrigals; / There will we make our peds of roses, / And a thousand fragrant posies", William Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, act iii. scene i. (Sung by Evans.)
