The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd

The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd (1600), by Walter Raleigh, is a poem that responds to and parodies the poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” (1599), by Christopher Marlowe. The nymph's reply to the shepherd's invitation is a point-by-point rejection of the shepherd's courtship for a life of pastoral idyll.[1]

The poet Walter Raleigh. (ca. 1588)

Stylistically, the poems by Marlowe and Raleigh are pastoral poetry written in six quatrains that employ a clerihew rhyme-scheme of AABB.[2] They also both follow the unstressed and stressed pattern of iambic tetrameter with two rhyme couplets per stanza. Four iambs are contained in each line respectively.[3] Raleigh uses multiple different figures of speech when writing his poem, including, but not limited to metaphor, and simile.[4]

The poem was written in the first-person perspective of the nymph, as it is her reply.[3] Historically, nymphs were used in Greek mythology to represent nature. This ties into the fact that the poem focusses on how temporary and changing nature is, inevitably forming her argument. She explains to the shepherd how everything ends, and nothing can last forever. The nymph explains in the first stanza how if the world was perfect and good things lasted forever, she would "live with thy and be thy love". But good things don't last forever, as the second stanza shows.[4] This is shown well through the use of flowers. In the shepherd's poem, he uses flowers to represent youth, while the nymph turns it around to represent how everything dies.[3]

Raleigh wrote the poem during the Elizabethan era between 1558 - 1603.[3] The poem itself was not the only reply the "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love", as many other poets followed in Raleigh's footsteps. Some of the replies were hundreds of years later.[4] In the 20th century, with the poem Raleigh was Right (0000) the poet William Carlos Williams sided against Christopher Marlowe.

The poem

The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd (1600)

by Walter Raleigh (1552 – 1618)

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.

Thy 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.

Influence

In the film The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), the poems are sung as a duet; Mistress Margaret Radcliffe sings Marlowe's proposition, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”, and Lady Penelope Gray sings Raleigh's rebuttal, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”, which performance angers Elizabeth I of England as allusion to her doomed love for Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex.

References
  1. Pastoral poetry. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, Third Edition. J.A. Cuddon, Ed. (1991) p. 686.
  2. "Notes for The Passionate Shepherd to His Love". Dr. Bruce Magee, Louisiana Tech University. Retrieved 29 October 2012.
  3. "LitCharts". LitCharts. Retrieved 24 March 2023.
  4. Baldwin, Emma (4 July 2020). "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd by Sir Walter Raleigh". Poem Analysis. Retrieved 24 March 2023.
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