«Come live with me and be my love», the shepherd begins, and spreads before his beloved a world of country pleasures: valleys and hills, rivers where birds sing madrigals, «beds of roses», «a gown made of the finest wool», a belt of straw and ivy buds «with coral clasps and amber studs».
It is the summit of the English pastoral: an idyll of simple, sensual promises, without shadow or irony. It was so famous that Walter Raleigh wrote a disillusioned answer, «The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd». Marlowe died at twenty-nine, not long before it was printed.