The+Nymphs+Reply+to+the+Shepherd

//by: Sir Walter Raleigh//
 * The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd**

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.

The 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.


 * Pastoral Poetry**

These types of poems are lyrical and they are meant to describe the "pleasures of a simple life in the country." The writing styles and tools used in this kind of poetry emulate those of Greek and Roman poetry. An example of this is when the poet uses a shepherd as the speaker of the poem to describe or address a shepherdness whom he is in love with. In these poems, the shepherd presents his passionate feelings of love and an ideal world of nature for them to live and love in together.


 * Tools**

This particular poem uses iambic tetrameter. Iambic Tetrameter is where each line contains four iambs, or two-syllable units of rhythm in which the first syllable is unstressed and the second is stressed. For example, in this poem, this is present in line 1:

If all/the world/and love/were young... (Line 1)

Here, the line is split up into two syllables with the second one being stressed.


 * Question:**

Seeing as this poem is a response to another poem of similar style, if you were the nymph, how would you respond to the shepherd in Marlowe's //The Passionate Shepherd to His Love//?