Sno; there were many similar poems at the time in which the poet attempts to verbally seduce a young lady:
Christopher Marlowe, the peer and mentor to a certain William Shakespeare composed the famous
Passionate Shepherd to His Love:
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.
Then there's the famous sonnet
When You Are Old by the great French Renaissance poet,
Pierre Ronsard:
When you are old, at evening candle-lit,
beside the fire bending to your wool,
read out my verse and murmur "Ronsard writ
this praise for me when I was beautiful."
And not a maid but at the sound of it,
though nodding at the stitch on broidered stool,
will start awake, and bless love's benefit,
whose long fidelities bring Time to school.
I shall be thin and ghost beneath the earth,
by myrtle-shade in quiet after pain,
but you, a crone will crouch beside the hearth,
mourning my love and all your proud disdain.
And what comes to-morrow who can say?
Live, pluck the roses of the world to-day.
Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,
Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant,
Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous émerveillant :
Ronsard me célébrait du temps que j’étais belle.
Lors, vous n’aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,
Déjà sous le labeur à demi sommeillant,
Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s’aille réveillant,
Bénissant votre nom de louange immortelle.
Je serai sous la terre et fantôme sans os :
Par les ombres myrteux je prendrai mon repos :
Vous serez au foyer une vieille accroupie,
Regrettant mon amour et votre fier dédain.
Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain :
Cueillez dès aujourd’hui les roses de la vie.
-1587
Ronsard's poem was given a modern variation by the British poet,
William Butler Yeats:
When You Are Old
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And, nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.
How many loved your moments of glad grace
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountain overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
-1893
The theme of all of these is that of the young poet attempting to win the love of a young lady by essentially telling her, "You won't be young and beautiful forever, honey. We should get busy right now."
Perhaps a shallow theme for poetry... or art. But I remember one wag writing some time ago that the whole of Shakespeare's sonnets could be reduced to "when I think of you, I feel blue."
A reminder that it is the "How" that matters more than the "What" in Art.
