SHEPHERD'S LOVE - discussion

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
by Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies.
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull:
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold:

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move.
Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move.
Then live with me and be my love.
[c.1599]

The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
by Sir Walter Raleigh

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.
[1600]

QUESTIONS

• What lines do you find especially appealing in “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”? What makes them so? Consider use of rhythm and sound as well as images. What kind of a world does this poem evoke? Is it one you would like to live in? What lines create these impressions?
• In what ways does this poem draw attention to itself as a work of art? Do you admire the inventiveness of its language, or see a self-conciousness in the language and imagery? Why? How does it affect your reading of the poem?
• Sir Walter Raleigh's "The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd" was written in response to Christopher Marlowe’s famous seduction poem.The narrator seems to reply very sensibly to the song of seduction. Why does she refuse the shepherd? What are her reasons? Would she have refused a rich man offering her a solid married future?
• Raleigh' poem is deceptively simple in its form, simple quatrains build on paired couplets. Notice, however, how the rhymes at the ends of the lines reflect the critical, though playful, tone of the young woman who is speaking. Gall and fall and forgotten and rotten are hardly rhymes that are expected in a love poem. How and why do they work in this poem?
• What are the terms of the social contract when young people date in the twenty-first century? Who is the seducer? Who loses and who wins? Write about this brave new world of relationships, and compare it to the world as represented in Raleigh’s poem.