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.

The speaker opens the poem with these lines, where he invites his beloved to live with him in his idealized country landscape. This landscape consists of a wide variety of features, including valleys, fields, woods, and “steepy mountains.” The speaker implies that the landscape’s diversity of features implies a similar diversity of pleasures. It’s precisely these pleasures the speaker invites his beloved to come experience first-hand. Though the speaker hasn’t yet provided a concrete list of what these pleasures include, he invokes them through his richly textured language. For instance, consider how L sounds proliferate through the entire stanza, subtly echoing the two key terms that appear in the first line: live and love. Likewise, consider how the long E sounds sonically unify words like “me,” “be,” and “we.” This texturing of language not only suggests the pleasures available to the beloved; it also points to the speaker’s larger goal of physical (i.e., sexual) union.

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.

These lines (9–12) comprise the poem’s third stanza, where the speaker begins to list the material goods he’ll give his beloved should they choose to stay with him in the country. The speaker’s references to fresh roses, posies, and other flowers suggests a vision of the pastoral landscape in the full bloom of spring. Such a vision of the countryside’s fertility has an erotic undertone that’s redolent of the speaker’s own erotic desire. The speaker indicates as much in his promise to embroider a “kirtle”—that is, a kind of gender-neutral skirt—“all with leaves of Myrtle.” In Greek mythology, the myrtle tree is sacred to the goddess of love, Aphrodite. The speaker’s gift powerfully symbolizes his amorous intent. Whereas the goods listed in this stanza are all relatively common botanicals, in the following two stanzas he promises increasingly luxurious materials such as gold, coral, and amber. With these materials, the speaker indicates the countryside’s abundant natural wealth, which serves as an additional enticement for his beloved to stay.

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.

The speaker closes the poem with lines 21–24, where he affirms his beloved that their life in the country will be a charmed one if they choose to stay. This closing stanza contains two kinds of refrain. First is a general refrain, where the speaker echoes an earlier image of leisure: “And we will sit upon the Rocks, / Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks, / By shallow Rivers” (lines 5–7). Just as the beloved’s days will be filled with riverside relaxation, their mornings will be spent enjoying amorous entertainments as young “Swains . . . dance and sing / For [her] delight.” The second type of refrain is more technical and relates to the way this stanza’s final two lines repeat, in slightly modified form, the last two lines of the previous stanza: “And if these pleasures may thee move, / Come live with me, and be my love” (lines 19–20). It’s also worth noting that the latter line—“Come live with me, and be my love“—is itself a refrain that repeats verbatim the poem’s opening line. On a purely formal level, this refrain recalls a commonly used structure for ending songs, suggesting that the speaker may in fact be singing to his beloved.

Take a Study Break