INSTITUTE OF OPEN EDUCATION AND INFORMATION

TECHNOLOGY - HUE UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

BRITISH LITERATURE
COMPARE THE POEMS “THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO
HIS LOVE” AND “THE NYMPH’S REPLY TO THE HEPHERD”
AND STATE YOUR PREFERENCE BETWEEN TWO POEMS.

Instructor : CAM LIEN, MA.

Student : NGUYỄN THỊ TRÀGIANG
Class : NGHE AN 11
Student's ID : 7052900983
 Vinh, May 4

TABLE OF CONTENT

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 2: THE COMPARISON BETWEEN TWO POEMS AND

PERSONAL VIEWS

1. Similarities

2. Differerences

3. Personal view

CHAPTER 3: CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
The pastoral genre has long been cherished in English literature for its ability to
evoke idyllic visions of rural life, often intertwined with themes of love, nature, and the
human condition. Two exemplary works within this tradition are "The Passionate
Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe and "The Nymph's Reply to the
Shepherd" by Sir Walter Raleigh. These poems, composed in the late 16th century, present
contrasting perspectives on the pastoral ideal, with Marlowe's poem offering an idealized
portrayal and Raleigh's response providing a more grounded critique.

Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" is a pastoral lyric that exudes
romanticism and idealism. Through rich and vivid language, Marlowe paints a picturesque
landscape teeming with natural beauty and abundance. The shepherd, addressing his
beloved, makes extravagant promises of a life filled with pleasures and material comforts
amidst the pastoral setting. His vows reflect a longing for an idyllic existence, free from
the complexities and hardships of urban life. Marlowe's poem captivates readers with its
enchanting imagery and lyrical charm, inviting them into a world of pastoral bliss.

In contrast, Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" offers a sobering

rejoinder to Marlowe's idealized vision. Written as a direct response to Marlowe's poem,
Raleigh's work embodies a sense of realism and pragmatism. The nymph, representing a
voice of reason and wisdom, counters the shepherd's promises with a poignant reflection
on the transient nature of beauty and the inevitable passage of time. Through her reply,
Raleigh critiques the shepherd's romantic notions, highlighting the fleetingness of earthly
pleasures and the harsh realities of life. The nymph's perspective serves as a reminder of
the impermanence inherent in human existence, tempering the shepherd's idealism with a
dose of reality.

This juxtaposition between Marlowe's idealism and Raleigh's realism sets the
stage for a nuanced exploration of the pastoral ideal. Both poems employ similar pastoral
imagery, yet their divergent tones and themes offer contrasting interpretations of rural life.

Marlowe's poem celebrates the timeless allure of nature and love, while Raleigh's response
challenges conventional notions of pastoral bliss, advocating for a more balanced and
nuanced understanding.

In this essay, we will delve deeper into the themes, imagery, and rhetorical devices
employed in both poems, examining how each poet constructs and deconstructs the
pastoral ideal. Through a comparative analysis of "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"
and "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd," we will explore the complexities of human
desire, the fleeting nature of beauty, and the enduring appeal of the pastoral genre.
Ultimately, while both poems offer compelling perspectives, our personal preference may
lean towards one over the other based on our individual inclinations towards idealism or
realism.

CHAPTER 2 : THE COMPARISON BETWEEN TWO POEMS

1. Similarities

1.1. Pastoral poetry is a type of poetry, which refers to the lives of shepherds. It portrays a
comparison between the simplicity or innocence of rural life and the artificiality of lives in
cities and towns. Such pieces of writing appeared in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe and “The Nymph’s
Reply to the Shepherd” by Sir Walter Ralegh are samples of such poetry. Both poems are
uniform and diverse in several ways. Marlowe and Ralegh wrote their masterpieces with
an invariable writing style. However, they proposed different opinions on love. An
analysis of two poems shows that “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and “The
Nymph’s Reply to The Shepherd” are similar in their structure and different in the tone of
authors, main theme outlined by both speakers, as well as the nature of works. Marlowe,
who is known as the first English dramatist before Shakespeare, offers a poem in which a
hero conveys his affection through loving words, planned actions, as well as future
dedication. Ralegh as a friend of Marlowe responds to his poem by using strong words to
illustrate the lack of nymph’s attraction to a shepherd. In fact, “The Nymph’s Reply to The
Shepherd” serves as a humorous parody to “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” as it
questions the truth of the original poem. The point of such alternation is to portray the
meaning of reality and time passing. Anyway, the works of Marlowe and Ralegh share a
number of features. First, they are companion poems as they illustrate the same experience
and use the same form of writing. Both poems directly follow one another and refer to the
same subjects. They are similar as the reply serves as a mirror of the proposal poem. 1.2.
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and “The Nymph’s Reply to The Shepherd” follow
the same structure. Each piece of poetry contains six stanzas with four lines. The practice
of four-line stanzas helps Marlowe portray the desire of shepherd to attract his beloved by
repeatedly addressing her. It should be mentioned that both poems with four measures per
line have also two syllables in each measure. They help the hero encourage his dearest
person to enjoy the nature. Similarly, Ralegh stresses the continuous denial in each of the
six stanzas. The writing styles employed in two poems replicate the images of each other.
One can prove such similarity by the fact that both works are examples of iambic
tetrameter poems, contain twenty-four lines, as well as include instances of assonance that
highlights the meaning of themes. Third, similarity exists in the fact that two poems are
pastoral dramas.

2. Differerences

2.1. The most obvious point of contrast between “The Passionate Shepherd to His
Love” and “The Nymph’s Reply to The Shepherd” is that Marlowe’s poem is an
invitation, while Ralegh’s work serves as an answer to the proposal. By their nature,
poetries of both authors are connected and, at the same time, have nothing in common.
Despite the fact that two works refer to the same subjects, they have different functions as
one poses a question, while the other answers it. In Christopher Marlowe’s verse, the
shepherd attempts to convince his beloved by emphasizing the things he can give to her.
On the contrary, Sir Walter Ralegh’s poem shows how the nymph uses similar method and
diction to deny his offer.

2.2. The next difference is the theme discussed in each piece of poetry. The main
idea of Marlowe’s poem is that love might be experienced by everyone and overcome
every obstacle. Christopher’s hero is in love with the girl. He expresses his attraction to
her and asks her to live with him, as well as to be his beloved person. In return the
shepherd promises her everything that she might want. In “The Passionate Shepherd to His
Love,” one may notice that the character swears to offer her the things he cannot give. For
example, he states that he will provide her with “a cap of flowers, and a kirtle” and “a belt
of straw and ivy buds”. It is evident that he offers her things that he will not manage to
give her mainly due to his deep love for her. It is also apparent that shepherd’s desire to
make his nymph happy is so great that he seems to believe in the possibility of his
promises fulfillment. As a result, Marlowe poem is a drama with a materialistic and
romantic attitude towards the concept of love.

2.3. Unlike “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” the theme of Ralegh is love, which
cannot be compared to material things. In his response to the original work, the author
shows that the nymph feels that affection cannot be compared with material world. “The
Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” provides an answer to Marlowe’s piece of poetry with a
practical point of view on love. The nymph thinks that the shepherd cannot give her the
things he has promised because he is only a shepherd. She knows that he does not have
much money or material wealth. Even if she loves him, she cannot live with him as she is
sure that he will fail to provide her with everything promised. The nymph is also conscious
of the shepherd’s hidden seductions. She is smart enough to reject his proposal by using
the exact words. As a result, one can see that the shepherd resembles a dreamer, while the
nymph tries to look realistically on the surrounding world.

2.4. The other obvious point of contrast for the two pieces of poetry is speaker’s tone.
Christopher’s speaker is a young shepherd who wants the girl he loves to live with him.
The tone of the passionate character is romantic and careful. One may notice how hopeful
sounds the shepherd when he offers his nymph everything and promises her a life of
pastoral luxury. Marlowe does not draw readers’ attention to the hero or setting but to the
claims that the shepherd makes in his attempts to make the young woman love him.
However, the tone of the response is not as romantic. Regretfully, the reply is not what the
shepherd desired to hear. “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” includes the aspects of
delight and innocence, while “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” involves the features
of doubt and skepticism. Probably, there was a time when the woman might have agreed to
marry shepherd, but she has come through several seasons and knows what may occur
over time. As a result, she underlines the fact that the things he offers are great until the
weather changes and makes everything look differently. It is evident in the following lines:
“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 evidence shows that
Ralegh’s piece of poetry is a satire of Marlowe’s one. It means that Ralegh turns
Marlowe’s sincere drama into a realistic refutation of shepherds’ statements and
confirmation of the silliness of pastoral love.

2.5. Finally, both poems differ by their nature. Christopher Marlowe’s verse is idealistic
and pastoral. The work romanticizes and idealizes the nature, love, as well as rural life. For
example, Marlowe writes about “pleasures” that are present in “.. .valleys, groves, hills,
and fields”. Such words prove the romantic attitude of the writer towards the world. On the
contrary, Ralegh’s work is practical and cynical. The author’s point of view is explained
by the fact that the world is realistic and that the shepherd does not speak the truth. To
express such attitude, the speaker tells that “rivers rage and rocks grow cold”, while
“flowers do fade”. The given lines underline the cynicism and Ralegh’s humorous
position. There is also a difference in two works on their expressions. Marlow includes
simple verse structure with rhyming couplets, while Ralegh’s poem has the same structure
but it offers the readers to think what the shepherd will say.

3. Personal view

As for my preference, while I appreciate the romanticism and charm of Marlowe's poem, I
find Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" more thoughtprovoking and resonant.
Its exploration of the complexities of love and the contrast between idealism and reality
adds depth to the conversation initiated by Marlowe's poem
CHAPTER 3 : CONCLUSION

In English literature, The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd is a poem that responds to
and parodies the poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”. 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.

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

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 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. 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.

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; in the 20th century, the poem Raleigh was Right (1940), by William Carlos
Williams sided with Walter Raleigh against Christopher Marlowe.

Ralegh and Marlowe knew each other and both were active in the murky world of
Elizabethan politics. Marlowe died in a tavern brawl and Ralegh was executed for treason
in the reign of James I but both, and in particular Marlowe, were accomplished poets. If
Marlowe’s poem is wildly romantic then Ralegh’s work is firmly realistic. The nymph
appears to be rejecting the exhortation to seize the day believing that flowers all too soon
fade whilst lovers’ protestations may not always be sincere. She rebukes the shepherd for
his “folly” but consider the tone of the final verse. Is there a sadness here mingling with
the rational argument? If only youth could last; if only we could go on loving and not
ageing then perhaps the shepherd might win her love. She recognises that what the
shepherd plans to offer are indeed “delights” but equally she knows that they cannot last
forever.