SATB, piano
Sensual music for rich words. Score sample and recording by Voices360, Jerry Rubino, conducting.
PROGRAM NOTE
This poem, a quotation by Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 3, Scene 1 of Christopher Marlowe’s poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” is the call of young love in all it’s ardor and fire, with promises of a beautiful life to come.
TEXT
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.
There will we sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, by whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
There will I make thee a bed of roses,
With a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle.
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Then live with me and be my love.