The song encourages the kind of lifestyle lived by the exiles in the forest of Arden. They shun ambition by not living a court life, live outdoors "i' the sun", singing, lying under the trees and eating what they can find in the forest (and being "pleased with what [they] get"). In the forest there is no Duke Frederick who would kill them--all they have to worry about is the cold and wet--"winter and rough weather