The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd

In English literature, 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. In her reply to the shepherd’s courtship, the nymph presents a point-by-point rejection of his offer of a transitory life of passion and pastoral idyll.[1]

The Elizabethan-era poet Walter Raleigh in the year 1588.

Stylistically, the poems by Marlowe and Raleigh are pastoral poetry written in six quatrains that employ a clerihew rhyme-scheme of AABB.[2] Compositionally, each poem follows the unstressed and stressed pattern of iambic tetrameter, using two couplets per stanza, with each line containing four iambs,[3] to realise the metaphors and similes.[4]

Historically, in the composition of English poetry, the nymph is a character from Greek mythology who represents Nature and the finite spans of life, youth, and love, which the nymph explains to the shepherd. As a reply poem, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” is written as a first-person narrative;[3] in the first stanza, the nymph tells the shepherd that if the world were perfect, she would live with him and be his love, but in the second stanza she reminds him that the good things in life, such as a bouquet of flowers, are impermanent.[4] In Marlowe’s poem, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”, the flowers proffered by the shepherd represent youth, which the nymph notes also connote death.[3]

Moreover, as a poem from the Elizabethan era (1558–1603) of the 16th century, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” was not the only poetical reply to the poem by Kit Marlowe;[3] in the 20th century, the poem Raleigh was Right (1940), by William Carlos Williams, sided with Walter Raleigh 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.

The poems are used In the film The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) (aka Elizabeth the Queen) to illustrate the tension between the protagonists and to create a pivotal point in the drama. When Mistress Margaret Radcliffe (Nanette Fabray) offers to sing Marlowe's proposition, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” for the queen, Lady Penelope Gray (Olivia de Havilland) who is in love with Essex, insists on singing Raleigh's rebuttal, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”, despite the frightened protests of the other ladies in waiting. The performance evokes Elizabeth I of England's profound fear that her love for Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex (Errol Flynn) is doomed by the great difference in their ages (32 years). Queen Elizabeth (Bette Davis) grows angrier with each verse until she explodes, hurling objects at the mirrors in the room and screaming that all the mirrors must be removed from the palace. The terrified women flee with the wrecked mirrors, leaving Elizabeth alone, except for Margaret, who is weeping in a corner. A tender scene between Elizabeth and Margaret includes Elizabeth's chilling speech about what it means to be a queen and ends with her promise to bring Margaret's beloved home from Ireland, where he is fighting against Tyrone. But Margaret's love is already dead, and Penelope in her jealousy joins a plot blocking all correspondence between Elizabeth and Essex that will do irreparable damage to the trust between them. The poems are not used in Maxwell Anderson's play Elizabeth the Queen, on which the film is based.[5]

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.
  5. Anderson, Maxwell (1930). Elizabeth the Queen : a play in three acts. Internet Archive. London : Longmans, Green.
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