A Page from the Past

I was shelving books today and… it was the strangest thing. It must have been one of Tom’s books, though how it ended up in the shop I have no idea. It was a collection of Elizabethan poetry, the one we used in the class where we met. I have a feeling this is going to sound funny because I’ve been reading, and thinking about school, and… I feel like I’ve clicked back over onto that track.
 
There was a sheet of notebook paper, folded up as a bookmark. I knew the page it was going to be on, but I looked anyway. Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Lass”. I’m sure he thought he was being terribly clever when he sent it to me, without the title or attribution, as he’d written it himself. I couldn’t stop laughing when I got it, but I thought surely, this must be a test? He wants to know if I’ll respond with the Reply. And far be it from me to step down from a challenge, for surely that was what this was.
 
 
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
 
 
 
And so I did, on the very paper tucked between the pages. In my best handwriting (this was before I was good at doing other people’s), I copied out Sir Walter Raleigh’s “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”. I say copied, but really it was mostly just checking the punctuation, double checking the exact wording, because I had it nearly memorized already. Wrote it out in my best penmanship, with an old fashioned pen and bright violet ink. No attribution - wasn’t that part of the game he was playing?
 
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.
 
Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complain of cares to come.
 
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.
 
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy bed of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
 
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.
 
Well, as it turns out, he had no idea that there was a Reply. To him, “The Passionate Shepherd” was just a poem he found in a book. He knew nothing of Marlowe, the pastoral tradition, the way poetry manuscripts circulated. Nothing of Marlowe’s work for the crown (though he did later remember having heard that he was an atheist), of “Marlowe’s mightly line,” his death over the reckoning of a bar bill in Deptford - nothing! Nothing at all! And certainly not that Sir Walter Raleigh had written a reply, tongue quite firmly in cheek, mocking not only Marlowe but the whole pastoral tradition - “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”. And quite rightly so!
 
Unfortunately, or fortunately? It wasn’t a game, and he was quite entirely ignorant of the entire context of all of it. What he was, was smitten, well and truly. The letters kept coming, slipped under my door in the middle of the night. He tried to actually write poetry, and - it was so dreadful, I just told him please not to, just say what you feel. And did he ever. I’m not [scribbled out]
 
I’m glad I burned that, all of it.
 
At any rate, that’s how it all started. He thought I was some kind of genius because I knew a poem he didn’t. But I’d never had someone to pal around with other than Shaw, who’s my cousin. And we weren’t just friends; he made me feel….ugh. It’s hard to put into words, and it also just makes me so angry, to think about how stupid I was. How could I believe him?
 
And to be fair, he never said he was going to propose. I just assumed…. Isn’t that what you do? Courtship, and then marriage, and then children? Living in a manor house, with servants probably, going to balls and dinners and….argh! My chest actually hurts thinking about this, like…. Well like when a cat steps on you, and you think how is it possible that this little tiny creature can put SO much weight on such a small area? Like that, but crushing my chest. This awful tight pain, it just makes me want to curl up and cry. Even years later, he can still hurt me.
 
No, not him. This is me doing it to myself. For my own stupidity at thinking he could ever love someone like me. Uneducated, uncultured, un-everything that he is. Rich bastard, so stupid that he can’t even steal a test without cocking it up.
 
[several lines scribbled out]
 
I should have thrown out the page that was in the book, but I didn’t. It’s still on my desk. I’ll write some more about him at some point to get it out of my system, but for now I just want to put it behind me.
 
So why can’t I throw away that page?