from TWO SONGS
~ by Cecil Day LewisCome live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of peace and plenty, bed and board,
That chance employment shall afford.I’ll handle dainties on the docks
And thou shalt read of summer frocks.
At evening by the sour canals
We’ll hope to hear some madrigals.Care on thy maiden brow shall put
A wreath of wrinkles, and thy foot
Be shod with pain. Not silken dress
But toil shall tire thy loveliness.Hunger shall make thy modest zone
And cheat fond death of all but bone.
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.##
A dockworker replaces Christopher Marlowe’s shepherd in this 1930s proletarian version of a pastoral lyric. Polluted canals replace freshwater brooks. Reading a magazine full of ads for unaffordably expensive dresses replaces a beautiful handmade kyrtle. Juxebox noise replaces ancient madrigals.
When Cecil Day Lewis uses the the line, “Not silken dress but toil shall tire thy loveliness,” he is playing upon the idiom of Marlowe’s era when “tire” would mean “to attire.” The backstage area where Marlowe’s actors put on their costumes was the “tiring house.”
