Come Away…

To extend a pastoral invitation into the country was not a new thing, especially in the context of the English Civil War. Consider, for example, Katherine Philips’ “Invitation to the Country,” which invites her friend (code-named Rosannia) to a “Retirement from the noise of Towns” (l. 11), where they can together “Look down on Vice, and Vanity, and Fate” (l. 46). Like Pulter’s poem, Philips privileges simple country life and the introspection it allows over the noise of the city and the constantly changing rewards of the court:

Katherine Philips, Invitation to the Country

Be kind, my dear Rosannia, though ’tis true
Thy Friendship will become thy Penance too;
Though there be nothing can reward the pain,
Nothing to satisfie or entertain;
Though all be empty, wild, and like to me,
Who make new Troubles in my Company:
Yet is the action more obliging great;
’Tis Hardship only makes Desert complete.
But yet to prove Mixtures all things compound,
There may in this be some advantage found;
For a Retirement from the noise of Towns,
Is that for which some Kings have left their Crowns.
And Conquerours, whose Laurel prest the brow,
Have chang’d it for the quiet Myrtle-bow.
For Titles, Honours, and the World’s Address,
Are things too cheap to make up Happiness;
The easie Tribute of a giddy race,
And pay’d less to the Person then the place.
So false reflected and so short content
Is that which Fortune and Opinion lent,
That who most try’d it have of it complain’d,
With Titles burthen’d and to Greatness chain’d.
For they alone enjoy’d what they possest,
Who relisht most and understood it best.
And yet that understanding made them know
The empty swift dispatch of all below.
So that what most can outward things endear,
Is the best means to make them disappear:
And even that Tyrant (Sense) doth these destroy,
As more officious to our Grief then Joy.
Thus all the glittering World is but a cheat,
Obtruding on our Sense things Gross for Great.
But he that can enquire and undisguise,
Will soon perceive the thing that hidden lies;
And find no Joys merit esteem but those
Whose Scene lies only at our own dispose.
Man unconcern’d without himself may be
His own both Prospect and Security.
Kings may be Slaves by their own Passions hurl’d,
But who commands himself commands the World.
A Country-life assists this study best,
Where no distractions do the Soul arrest:
There Heav’n and Earth lie open to our view,
There we search Nature and its Author too;
Possest with Freedom and a real State
Look down on Vice, and Vanity, and Fate.
There (my Rosannia) will we, mingling Souls,
Pity the Folly which the World controuls;
And all those Grandeurs which the World do prize
We either can enjoy, or can despise.

Katherine Philips, “Invitation to the Country,” in Poems. By the Incomparable Mrs. K.P. (London, 1664), pages 203–04. Early English Books Online. [Italics and initial capitalization regularized.]

However, one thing that distinguishes Pulter’s poem from one like Philips’ is its repeated refrain (“Then come, sweet virgins, come away; / What is it that invites your stay?”), which through its repetition makes her poem closer to a song, and hearkens to the famous poetic exchange between Christopher Marlowe and Sir Walter Raleigh. In Marlowe’s poem “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love,” a shepherd implores his “nymph” with the repeated “Come live with me, and be my love”; in “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” Raleigh speaks on behalf of the nymph to reject the invitation. Pulter varies her refrain as she repeats it, occasionally calling her daughters “virgins” and “maidens,” and her invitation moves from the rosy pastoral optimism of Marlowe’s poem to the bleak realism and even nihilism of Raleigh’s reply.

Christopher Marlowe
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Come live with me, and be my love;
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales 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 shepherd-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, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.” Luminarium.org.

Sir Walter Raleigh
The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd

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 complains 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.

The gowns, thy shoes, thy beds 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.

Sir Walter Raleigh, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd.” Luminarium.org.

After the fact, John Donne made his own contribution to this famous exchange, in a poem called “The Bait.” Donne’s poem, witty and erotic, is less relevant to Pulter’s poem, but it does show the continuing afterlife of Marlowe and Raleigh’s exchange even decades after it had passed, and the mixture of invitation with occasionally violent diction and imagery may be a useful frame for Pulter’s own contribution to this genre.

John Donne, The Bait

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

There will the river whisp’ring run
Warm’d by thy eyes, more than the sun;
And there th’enamour’d 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 myself 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 treacherously 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 catch’d thereby,
Alas! is wiser far than I.

John Donne, “The Bait.” Luminarium.org.