Notes for "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"

"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" NOTES

The above link should take you to notes for the poem. Please annotate your copy of the poem and bring it with you to class on Monday. The notes can also be found in the lines below...
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"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" Stanza Summaries

We know from the title that this poem is a response, or reply, to someone and/or something else that's already been written—in this case Christopher Marlowe's poem, "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love." Reading Marlowe's poem is pretty essential to understanding what Ralegh is doing with his response, but even without having read it we still get the gist of what "The Passionate Shepherd" is about by reading Ralegh's first stanza. (Hint: Ralegh's answer is not promising for the shepherd in question.)

Whereas Marlowe's lyric begins with optimistic (and ultimately idealistic) promises, Ralegh's poem begins with a conditional statement that sets up a rejection of Marlowe's shepherd's proposal: I might be persuaded to come live with you if a) I didn't have real world problems to think about and b) you had been telling the truth about what our life together would be like, but I do and you weren't so see ya… never.

The next three stanzas seal the deal, listing the ways and reasons the shepherd's promises are too good to be true, like the fact that flowers he promised will wither and die, or that it will eventually get too cold for them to hang out with the sheep by the river. These might seem like odd reasons to turn down a potential love interest, but here is where being familiar with Marlowe's poem is really useful: each stanza in Ralegh's verse dismantles, dismisses, or qualifies a promise made in the corresponding stanza of Marlowe's original. Nifty, eh?

By the time the final stanza arrives, the nymph seems to have basically crushed the poor shepherd's dreams. The poem, however, has a slightly more optimistic conclusion than you might have expected. The nymph's final words to the shepherd imply that, were some of the more humdrum realities of life removed (like the fact that we all get old and die and that somewhere in between now and then we have to pay for like, 200,000 meals and maybe some clothes), perhaps her answer would be different. It's a moot point because the situation she describes is unobtainable, but that doesn't mean those final lines aren't worth a good, close look.

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this

awesome poem line-by-line!

Stanza 1 Summary

Lines 1-2

If all the world and love were young,

And truth in every Shepherd's tongue,

Before we even get started, we're going to backtrack. We're going all the way back to Line 0, a.k.a. the title, a.k.a. "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd."

The title is pretty important, but there is one supremely important thing that the title tells us about this poem that you must know before you read any further, and that is the fact that this poem was written as a response to Christopher Marlowe poem which is basically a love poem from a shepherd to his… well, love. So there. Now you know.

"The Nymph's Reply" opens with a hypothetical: If everyone in the world were young and in love, and if love were some new, yet undiscovered feeling…

And also all the shepherds need to be honest… 

Then… wait—there is no then. At least not yet. The first two lines of this poem are just a hypothetical, and a rather intriguing one at that. Why is the speaker bothering to describe this impossible scenario? What is the speaker's problem with shepherds? Ralegh, it seems, doesn't want to give away too much too soon. 

Shepherds, as a poetic image, represent the countryside and all that is good, innocent, fun-loving, and gentle in the world. They don't sound so bad, right? So why might Ralegh be attacking a figure that represents such warm and fuzzy values? And what is the impact of his declaration that said shepherds are full of lies? 

Also, when was the last time you looked in someone's tongue? Pretty recently? No, we thought not. So what kind of sick, sadistic nymph do we have here, running around slicing open the tongues of shepherds? The answer is, of course, that our nymph is nothing like that. Ralegh is using a bit of figurative language here, something called metonymy (pronounced meh-tawn-uh-mee). 

Metonymy is a figure of speech in which one word or phrase is replaced by another with which it is closely associated. It's like hearing on the news that "The White House is expected to make a statement" about something. You know that the newscaster doesn't mean that the actual building is expected to speak, but, instead, that the President will be making an announcement. In line 2, then, "tongue" functions metonymically as a stand-in for "words" or "promises."

Lines 3-4

These pretty pleasures might me move,

To live with thee, and be thy love.

Thank goodness. Like all good "If" statements, the one offered in line 1 does, in fact, have a "then" clause attached to it. In this case, if everyone in the world were young and in love, and if love were some new, undiscovered feeling and if certain shepherds told nothing but the truth, THEN the speaker might be convinced to live with someone and be their love—which is the main gist of the Christopher Marlowe poem to which this poem is responding.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up the truck. When did all this "come live with me" business enter into the mix? And who, exactly, is the someone in question? 

According to the title, we are dealing with an exchange between a girl, or nymph, and a shepherd. The structure of these lines sets up the poem as a dialogue between two people, and judging by the request mentioned in line 4, it appears we are getting the second half of the conversation. This matches up with what the titles tells us about this poem being a "reply" to the shepherd.

Enter Marlowe. Here is your un-debatable proof that Ralegh is responding directly to Christopher Marlowe's poem, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love."

How do we know? Marlowe's poem uses the exact same phrasing, "live with me, and be my love" that we see Ralegh use at the end of line 4. This, folks, is what we in the poetry business like to refer to as an allusion, or a super-cool phenomenon that occurs when one piece of literature references, echoes, or invokes another.

There's also some alliteration going on in these lines. (Hmm. We just wonder if that will be a recurring trend in the rest of this poem.) In this case, the repeated sounds are the P of "pretty pleasures" and the M of "might me move." 

But what does all this mean for the nymph and the shepherd? Clearly the nymph's hypothetical scenario is unobtainable, but is that her final word on the subject?

Stanza 2 Summary

Lines 5-6

Time drives the flocks from field to fold,

When Rivers rage and Rocks grow cold,

Stanza 2 looks like it might provide some answers, and it's not looking good for our shepherd. But let's break it down a bit further.

Although it isn't explicitly stated, the first line of stanza 2 essentially starts with a big, old BUT: if lines 1 and 2, then maybe lines 3-4, BUT… the coming of winter drives sheep away from the pasture and into the stables, rivers are occasionally violent and destructive, and cold rocks don't make the best sitting places.

As you might have noticed, many of the same images that appear in Marlowe's poem also show up in Ralegh's reply, only in slightly different states. Whereas "The Passionate Shepherd" depicts the countryside in full springtime bloom, Ralegh's poem contains a colder, angrier, more somber portrait of nature. Marlowe's rivers are shallow, Ralegh's are raging. Marlowe's sheep are grazing in the open; Ralegh's have been taken in for the winter.

Lines 7-8

And Philomel becometh dumb,

The rest complains of cares to come.

The Marlowe/Ralegh parallels continue, but before we can really dig into them, we should unpack the wording of these two lines.

Philomel, or Philomela, is a character from Greek mythology who was turned into a bird. Her name, however, has come to represent several things, including a nightingale and a musical instrument kind of like a violin. When line 7 talks about Philomel becoming dumb, it can mean that either the musical instrument ceases to play, or the nightingale is no longer singing. This, folks, is both an allusion to Greek mythology, and a poetic symbol that packs a lot of punch.

Line 8 is another line with a potential double-meaning. It could mean that, when winter comes, the "rest" of the people—meaning everyone who doesn't have their head up in the clouds like Marlowe's shepherd—complain of the woes and hardships associated with the coming season. It could also be a musical reference, however, to a "rest" or pause in the playing of the philomel or the singing of the nightingale, a musical silence that contrasts with the "melodious birds" we find in the second stanza of Marlowe's poem.

Another way in which Ralegh mirrors Marlowe is with his use of poetic devices. The second stanza of Marlowe's poem is heavy on alliteration, so Ralegh's second stanza uses a lot of it, too. 

Even though both stanzas use the same poetic device, they couldn't sound more different. The heavy, sharp, cutting sounds used by Ralegh, like the hard C in "complains of cares to come" and the R of "rivers rage and rocks grow cold" are harsh sounds that parallel an equally harsh vision of time and nature.

Stanza 3 Summary

Lines 9-10

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields,

To wayward winter reckoning yields,

As we approach stanza 3, we're beginning to see a trend in Ralegh's imagery. Whereas Marlowe is totally focused on spring and all its beauty, Ralegh's poem chooses to focus on the impermanence of that beauty, epitomized by the coming of winter. 

In lines 9 and 10, the nymph argues that spring's flowers fade, and wanton, or luxurious, overly-fertile, fields will eventually wither up in the cold weather.

Ralegh's use of the word "reckoning" is particularly interesting. The word "reckoning" is Renaissance lingo for a bill, or the settling of an account, but it is also another word for the avenging or punishing of past mistakes and misdeeds. It seems like Ralegh is suggesting that nature somehow deserves the cruelty and death of winter as punishment for its springtime bounty. That's a pretty harsh stance to take, and now we're left wondering what else this imagery might imply about the speaker's view of time and the seasons. It seems that even the hottest of loves can run cold over time—at least according to this poetic set-up.

You might have noticed that alliteration is, once again, making an appearance. We have the F sound of "flowers do fade, and wanton fields" and then also a rolling W in the words "wanton," "wayward," and "winter." 

The repeated sounds in these lines are softer than the harsh sounds that we saw in stanza 2, but their implementation here is not meant to be calming or soothing. The meter and poetic devices are smooth, but they're a stark contrast to the death vibes coming from the content; the result is a sort of mockery of Marlowe's pastoral. By turning smooth, soft, soothing poetic devices around and showing how the sounds that pain such a pretty picture of the countryside can also be used to talk about death and decay, Ralegh exposes Marlowe's poetic trickery and the emptiness of the shepherd's promises. Harsh!

Lines 11-12

A honey tongue, a heart of gall,

Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

Lines 11 and 12 might read more like some old proverb your grandmother uses ("a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" or "don't cry over spilt milk") than a piece of early modern poetry, but that just might the precise effect that Ralegh is going for.

Before we unpack the age-old wisdom, let's take these lines piece by piece, since the wording is a little tricky. 

"A honey tongue": Remember back in line 2, when we talked about "truth in every Shepherd's tongue"? Once again, Ralegh is using metonymy as "tongue" is a stand-in for "words" or "promises." So, a "honey tongue" = honeyed (or sweet) words.

By contrast, "a heart of gall" can mean a heart of bile or bitterness. Is it just us, or does this sound like the meanest heart ever? When looking at this line, it's very tempting to assume that "gall" is meant to be read in its proverbial sense, as a symbol of something that is very bitter or cruel. Poetry is big on symbolism just like this, so while this is a totally understandable interpretation to explore, you should also make sure that the word in question doesn't have some other, non-symbolic-but-still-applicable definition before running away with the symbolic one. As it turns out, the dictionary-approved definition of "gall" is something more like "bold, impudent behavior." 

So, how do we know which definition is being used here? Do we think the speaker is talking about the shepherd's cruelty or his sassy boldness? Given the context of Marlowe's poem and the nymph's concerns about the short-term nature of the shepherd's plans, we are inclined to think that it's his boldness and lack of forethought that are falling under criticism here.

For now, though, onto line 12! So what is the nymph saying about sweet words and bold, impetuous choices? What does it mean for something to be "fancy's spring and sorrow's fall"? 

Our first big clue is the use of the terms "spring" and "fall" (yes, like the seasons). The use of these words here tells us that the relationship between fancy and sorrow is going mirror the relationship between spring and fall. But what exactly is that relationship? And what is "fancy"?

Fancy means lots of things of course, but, as a noun, it is defined as "a feeling of liking or attraction, typically one that is superficial" or "a notion or whim."

Now let's think about the seasons, and since nature and seasonal imagery have a big role in this poem, let's think extra hard about how the seasons are portrayed in this poem. 

Generally speaking, spring is considered the season of new life, rebirth, and the blooming of nature, but the nymph seems to focus mainly on just how short-lived that renewal is. What a Debbie Downer. Fall, on the opposite hand, is the season in which all that new life totally withers up because the weather becomes cold and inhospitable. All that coldness, however, is seen by the nymph in a weirdly positive light; for her, fall and the coming of winter are associated with long-term planning, reason, and practicality. Okay, so maybe she's not a Debbie Downer. Maybe she's a Practical Polly.

So, let's put it all together. Given what we now know, the lines essentially read: Sweet words ("honey tongue") and bold, impetuous choices ("heart of gall") encourage the birth of arbitrary decisions and unrealistic romantic gestures (fancy's spring) but ultimately prove nothing more than a prelude (autumn) to sorrow. 

Got it? You see, the message of these two lines is that favoring short-term pleasures over long-term obligations will only lead to sorrow. The nymph is clearly on Team Reason, Logic, and Practicality and thinks that the shepherd is totally wasting his time staring at flowers along with the rest of Team Whimsy. 

The proverb-like sound of the lines, then, is totally intentional. By designing the lines to invoke a feeling of age-old wisdom, Ralegh is using the tone to provide support for the nymph's very point: that long-term planning and age-old wisdom should not be cast aside for whatever joys the immediate present might appear to have.

Stanza 4 Summary

Lines 13-14

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of Roses,

Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies

Welcome to stanza 4, which starts by naming some objects, most of which are clothes and other household items. This isn't just any old packing list, though. The clothing and other items mentioned here—the gowns, shoes, beds of roses, hats, skirts, and posies—all appear in Marlowe's poem.

In "The Passionate Shepherd," this same list is presented by means of a poetic device called a blazon. Blazons are a kind of poetry in which the speaker of the poem praises another person, usually a woman, by singling out different parts of her body and using metaphors to describe how beautiful and awesome they are. The description typically dedicates one line to each body part, working up from the woman's body and ending with a description of her face, hair, or eyes.  By compacting Marlowe's 8+ line blazon into only two meager lines and stripping away all its descriptive details, the speaker is undermining the romance traditionally associated with the poetic device. Spoilsport!

Let's take a closer look at a few of the items mentioned in this list, then—namely, the cap, the kirtle, the bed of Roses, and the posies. First up: vocabulary check. It's good to know that "cap" is another word for hat and that "kirtle" is a totally outdated word for skirt. Okay, enough vocab. Now let's move on to the juicy stuff!

The bed of roses is a prime example from the Marlowe poem of how the speaker in "The Passionate Shepherd" uses and sees nature. For him, nature is a tool of seduction, and he relies on the beauty of nature to make his offer to the nymph more appealing. Roses are the perfect candidate because, as flowers, they are already associated with love, lust, and romance.

Do you know what a posey is? Probably not, since, much like "kirtle," it's not exactly common in our vocabulary anymore. Back in the 1600s, though, the word "posey" was pretty versatile. It primarily meant a bunch of flowers, kind of like a small bouquet, but it was also used as another word for poems and poetry. Both definitions seem potentially applicable here, so which "posies" is Ralegh referencing? How does your choice of definition impact your interpretation of the line?

Lines 15-16

Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten:

In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

Ouch. Ralegh is officially dissing all of Marlowe's shepherd's plans, and basically saying that his promises are worthless because those gowns, skirts, caps, and beds of roses will become piles of smelly, rotten flowers. Whatever happened to, "it's the thought that counts"?

Line 15 is pretty self-explanatory, but line 16 is a bit more confusing. It helps if you know that "folly" is another term for foolishness; so all the gifts offered up by the shepherd are ripe in foolishness, but in reason and practicality, they come up sorely lacking. 

If you've been keeping tabs on the meter and rhyme scheme in this poem, you might notice something different about this stanza. Instead of just the last syllable of each line rhyming, the last two syllables of each line rhyme. This is officially called a feminine rhyme, and, much like we see in this stanza, a feminine rhyme usually means that there is an extra, unstressed syllable at the end of the line. 

But what does Ralegh's use of feminine rhyme mean? Generally feminine rhymes are considered softer endings, but the words like "forgotten" and "rotten" seem to be emphasized, not softened, by the double rhyme. Is this another perversion of a typically romantic poetic device, perhaps?

Let's look closely at the final words of this stanza: roses, posies, rotten, forgotten. The pairing here seems pretty obvious: roses become rotten, posies become forgotten. This brings up interesting questions regarding the permanence of poetry, too. What does it mean for Ralegh, a poet himself, to say that Marlowe's "posey" is just as impermanent as the spring flowers? Hmm.

Now back to the roses. Remember how we said that Marlowe's shepherd uses nature as a method of seduction? Well, this makes the nymph's attack on the impermanence of that bed of roses a double-whammy; it is both a rejection of the shepherd's offer and also a general dismissal of the love, romance, and seduction roses often symbolize.

Stanza 5 Summary

Lines 17-18

Thy belt of straw and Ivy buds,

The Coral clasps and amber studs,

In these lines, the nymph continues to reject the shepherd's gifts and promises. All of these things are gifts promised to the addressed by the shepherd in the Marlowe poem. Sounds like a pretty sweet offer to us!

Lines 19-20

All these in me no means can move

To come to thee and be thy love.

But it looks like the nymph is not having it. Lines 19 and 20 really spell it out for the shepherd: all the gifts mentioned earlier cannot convince me to come and live with you.

Once again, Ralegh's choice of wording raises intriguing questions. The word "means," for example, is defined as both a method by which something is brought about and also as another word for money and financial resources. So what is the nymph really saying? That the shepherd stirred her heart but not her pocket book? That she wants to come but there's just no feasible way she can make it happen? Or is this just a plain, flat-out no?

Compare and contrast these lines to their parallels in the Marlowe poem. Marlowe's shepherd speaks of being moved by pleasures and delights, not means, which sort of sounds like two totally different things. "Pleasures and delights" have an element of fun and frivolity associated with them, whereas "means" seem very cut-and-dry, by-the-books and otherwise totally dull and boring. It's as though we're getting more of this by-the-book nymph-itude happening here.

We've also got some cool alliteration and consonance going on in line 19—lots of M and N sounds all over the place. If you think about those sounds, doesn't it kind of sound like a mumble? Compared to the rest of Ralegh's diction, most of which is very pronounced and crisp, this line certainly seems to blend together on the tongue more than others.

Stanza 6 Summary

Lines 21-22

But could youth last, and love still breed,

Had joys no date, nor age no need,

In what's likely the poetic twist of the sixteenth century, we encounter in the final stanza of "The Nymph's Reply" a serious BUT: "Sure, none of what you promise me is going to last, but if they did last, and if we didn't have to worry about the real world…" 

This poem seemed so set on debunking the naive, spring-happy take on love and romance held by Marlowe's shepherd, so why does our sober nymph seem to be backtracking?

Her caveat isn't a big one, and it sounds remarkably like something we heard back up in stanza 1. Once again, eternal youth and young love enter the picture.

And this time, they're accompanied by everlasting joys. 

What is the deal with the nymph's fixation on these impossible hypotheticals, though? Does she do it because she feels bad rejecting the shepherd straight up?

Is it some kind of twisted mind game? Or is she okay with being hypothetical because she knows that this can never come to be—love will always fade and the world will always get in the way?

Lines 23-24

Then these delights my mind might move


To live with thee, and be thy love.

We get to line 23 and we can hardly believe it, but even in a world where youth lasts forever and joys are never-ending, the nymph would only maybe be convinced to take the shepherd's offer ("my mind might move"). Is this the harshest blow of them all?

And what are the "delights" being referenced? It's natural to think the "delights" are the shepherd's gifts mentioned above, but couldn't "delights" also refer to the eternal youth and everlasting joys mentioned in lines 21 and 22? We don't know about you, but we think the prospect of immortality and eternal happiness is much more delightful than a couple of gowns and hats made out of flowers—even if they did have ivy buds!

The poem ends with a tantalizing final stanza. What does the nymph really want? What is motivating her choices? How does the shepherd take her response?

We would love for the nymph-shepherd dialogue to continue (what would he say next?!), but sadly the Ralegh-Marlowe exchange ends here.

"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"

Symbolism, Imagery & Wordplay

The Shepherd

Symbol Analysis

Seeing as this poem is a reply to "The Passionate Shepherd," it makes sense that shepherds would be mentioned and might carry a bit of symbolic weight. We mention in the "Summary" that shepherds, as a poetic image, are frequently associated with all that is warm, fuzzy, and lovely about the countryside. What we didn't mention is that, if you've got shepherds in a poem from Elizabethan England, you also have a potential reference to good old Queen Bess herself. This is thanks to a guy named Edmund Spenser, who also happened to be a good friend of our author, Sir Walter Ralegh. We also didn't mention the possibility that the Queen and Sir Walter were a little bit more than platonic pals. We don't know about you, but it sounds like line 2 just got a lot more interesting!

Line 2: The reference to lying shepherds in line 2, then, can also potentially be read as an attack on Elizabeth I. Ralegh spent much of his adult life in good standing with the royal family, but due to the fact that he secretly married one of Elizabeth's ladies in waiting in 1592, he wasn't exactly on the best terms with the Queen when he wrote "The Nymph's Reply." Elizabeth, it's said, flew into a jealous rage and threw him in the Tower of London when she found out about the marriage. It's hard to know exactly what the relationship between Ralegh and the Queen was, but it's distinctly possible that the reference to shepherds and the general attack on romance and love in the poem could be relevant to Ralegh's personal history.

Nature Imagery

Symbol Analysis

In "The Nymph's Reply," nature and natural imagery are presented as constantly in decay and moving closer toward death. There is no mention of the rejuvenation and new life associated with springtime, only of rot and withering. It doesn't make for the prettiest picture, but it does effectively disqualify the overly idealized picture of eternal spring presented in "The Passionate Shepherd." It's also interesting to note that, as far as poetic images go, these pictures of nature are about as flat as they come. This isn't because Ralegh is a bad poet or has a phobia of adjectives; it's just another way in which he strips down the inflated version of the countryside presented by Marlowe's shepherd.

Line 5: In "The Nymph's Reply," nature is driven relentlessly forward by the passing of time. Here, the sheep that grazed happily at pasture in Marlowe's poem are being forced into the stables by the inevitable onset of cold weather. Ralegh is using this image to call Marlowe's bluff, pointing out that the scenery he uses as a lure will only be available 
temporarily, if that.

Line 6: Ralegh also presents nature as dangerous and harsh. It's hard to fault him for this portrayal, either, as living conditions in the countryside during the 1600s were anything but luxurious. The strength of this image lies in the fact that it cannot be contradicted by reality. 

Lines 9-10: The images of flowers fading and wanton fields being forced to surrender their bounty to reckless winter weather are presented as contrasts to the typical conception of the countryside as being green and fertile. Ralegh is admitting that, while flowers and fields do have their time to bloom, all too soon that fertility is stripped away from them. The image can also be seen as a representation of the prosperity of the shepherd and nymph, should she take his offer; during the spring, their life would be full and happy, but winter would replace all those joys with hardships with no guarantee of a recovery. Bummer.

Lines 13-15: Rotting flowers and forgotten poems introduce a final, negative force into Ralegh's countryside: death. Given all her talk of eternal youth, death and old age are clearly on the mind of our nymph. Unlike the shepherd, she sees only death in the countryside instead of the possibility for new life.

Philomel

Symbol Analysis

Philomel, or Philomela, is the name of a Greek goddess who was turned into a bird. The word has come to represent so much more, though, and a lot of its potential symbolism plays into Ralegh's poem. Let's look at line 7 in light of some of these potential meanings.

Line 7 (Philomel as musical instrument): It makes a lot of sense for Ralegh to be talking about a philomel, the musical instrument. Shepherds were frequently depicted playing musical instruments, so the idea that their songs are fleeting and don't last forever certainly fits into the rest of the imagery of impermanence that Ralegh has been throwing at us. 

Line 7 (Philomel as nightingale): But it also makes a lot of sense if Ralegh is referring to the philomel, another term for the nightingale. The nightingale is native to Europe, but winters in Africa, so the "dumbing" of the philomel could be another way in which Ralegh is negating the "melodious birds" from Marlowe's poem and referencing the coming of winter.

Line 7 (Philomel as nightingale/poetry): The nightingale is also a favorite symbol of poets and often used as a symbol of poets and their poetry. What does it mean for poets and poetry, though, that the philomel becomes dumb and stops singing? This could be a dismissal of Marlowe's poem as only empty words, but it necessarily applies to Ralegh's writing, too.

Form and Meter:

Copycat alert! Ralegh uses the exact same meter (iambic tetrameter—more on that below) and form (six quatrains, or four-line stanzas) in "The Nymph's Reply" that Marlowe uses in "The Passionate Shepherd." Coincidence? We think not. That being said, this combo isn't exactly rare and unheard of in the world of poetry.

Speaker: Point of View

The title tells us that the speaker of this poem is "the nymph," but they don't mean "nymph" in the mythological sense. Back in the day, "nymph" was actually another word for girl, although it generally conjured images of beautiful young damsels as opposed to a promiscuous, plain-faced scullery maids. There is an undeniable element of innocence and beauty implied when you use the word "nymph" to describe someone, but the speaker in "The Nymph's Reply" seems to be anything but innocent or naive.

In fact, the speaker of this poem sounds positively world-weary. Her world is one of always winter, never Christmas and, from her description, life hasn't left her any room for fun. One of the most intriguing questions about the speaker, though, is how much she buys in to her own argument. She says that winter will come and ruin all the fun so why have fun in the first place, but is she really convinced that's the way to go?

Take a look at stanzas 1 and 6. Here, the nymph says that if she knew she could be young, happy, and in love forever, she might consider living with the shepherd, but winter comes just as regularly for someone who's permanently 22 as it does for some miserable spinster who continues to age. So what is the nymph's real problem with accepting the shepherd's offer?

Setting: Where It All Goes Down

If you hang out with enough English nerds, you'll probably hear the word "edenic" thrown around every now and then. This basically means that something is "like the Garden of Eden" (in its perfection, beauty, etc.). With this definition established, we can now safely say that the countryside setting in Ralegh's poem is the opposite of edenic, a total contrast to the pastoral countryside portrayed in Marlowe's poem.

In Marlowe's countryside, much like in the Garden of Eden, flowers are always blooming, the land is always fertile, and nature provides everything that people need to survive. In Ralegh's poem, the opposite is true. Marlowe's rivers are shallow, Ralegh's are raging. Marlowe's flowers are blooming, Ralegh's are withered and rotten. Marlowe's countryside is one where natural resources are given freely and happily, whereas Ralegh's fields are in debt, and being punished by winter for their springtime fertility.

Put another way, if Marlowe's setting is Disneyland, then Ralegh's setting is a day-long insurance seminar (no offense to you budding insurance agents out there). Still, for someone who writes in glowing detail about the beauties and resources of the New World, this cynical portrayal of nature is a little bit surprising. It is, however, a very effective strategy if Ralegh's main target is not nature itself, but the too-good-to-be-true representation of romance portrayed in Marlowe's poem. Much of the allure of "The Passionate Shepherd" depends on the beauty of nature being seductive to the shepherd's love. Everything is green and groovy over there. If Ralegh can establish that the shepherd's countryside is nothing but a load of phooey, the shepherd's argument comes undone at the seams and the nymph is left with the easiest choice ever. The question that then emerges is why is Ralegh's view of love so jaded and who was the ex-girlfriend that burned him so badly?

Sound Check

Read this poem aloud. What do you hear?

Horse-Drawn Cart

Some might say this poem sounds exactly like a horse pulling a cart over an old country road. The meter is regular and predictable, just like the hooves of a horse. It plods along at a relatively steady pace, not overwhelming the content, but complementing it nicely. And the deviations from the meter, like the one we see in "Time drives our flocks" (5)? Those little changes match up perfectly with the rugged, unpredictable, occasionally hilly terrain of our country road.

The tone is a little tired—"flowers do fade"—like rejecting this shepherd is just one item on a huge laundry list of things our nymph has to take care of that day (9). The slow tempo of a workhorse matches it perfectly. 

The poetic devices—like alliteration, consonance, and internal rhyme—don't contribute musicality to this poem like they do in "The Passionate Shepherd." Instead, Ralegh uses them ironically, and uses normally smooth, melodic poetic devices to deliver a biting mockery of Marlowe's pastoral world.

Take the alliteration of the F sound, for example: in Marlowe's poem, the alliterating F is used to describe happy, peaceful flocks being fed by the loving couple. We hear about caps of flowers, waterfalls, fine wool, and fragrant posies. Ralegh alliterates the same, soft F, but instead describes flocks in the fold, flowers fading and the death of once-wanton fields. The pastoral countryside of the shepherd is reduced to nothing more than fancy or folly, two things also scorned by the nymph. The inversion of these poetic devices sounds like the crack of a whip. It drives the poem forward, but it's definitely meant to sting.

What’s Up With the Title?

"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" is exactly what it says it is: a poem from a girl to a boy who likes sheep, written in response to a poem said girl originally received from the aforementioned boy. Not very complicated, folks.

Straightforward though the title may be, it points out an interesting facet of literary culture during the 1600s. We've made somewhat of a big deal about the connection between "The Nymph's Reply" and Marlowe's poem, "The Passionate Shepherd." What we haven't made a big deal about (until now) is the fact that the kind of poetic dialogue that Marlowe and Ralegh have going on here is actually not that big of a deal. That's right—people wrote "replies" and "responses" to other people's poems all the time. 

Part of the reason for this is that the poetry-writing community in early modern England was relatively small—the time, supplies, education, and connections needed to become a well-known poet were only available to the very wealthy or the extremely determined. Also, the smallness of that poetic community created something really special: the literary coterie. (A coterie is a small group of people with a shared interest.)

If you were writing poems in 1600s, chances were that you had lots of friends and acquaintances who were also writing poems. You would write poems on the same subjects and get your other friends to pick which one they thought was best, you and your friends would send poems back and forth to each other in letters, and you might even write poems about how awesome your other friends' poems were. Ralegh was no exception. In addition to his obvious familiarity with Marlowe's work, Ralegh was friends with Edmund Spenser and Queen Elizabeth I (a poet herself), was referenced in some of Shakespeare's sonnets, and his travel writings were one of several guiding influences on The Tempest.

Think back on the title for a minute. Notice how, even though it never mentions Marlowe's name, everyone and their mother seems to know that Ralegh is writing in response to "The Passionate Shepherd"? That is the beauty of the literary coterie. It is also what we call a very, very, very small world.

Sir Walter Ralegh’s Calling Card

What is the poet’s signature style?

Cynicism

Sir Walter Ralegh was a guy who lived large. He took big risks and those occasionally reaped big rewards. The ones that didn't work out, though, really didn't work out and ended up getting him into a lot of trouble. Just a few short years after enjoying favor and popularity with the royal family, Ralegh found himself locked up in the Tower of London and ultimately executed upon charges for treason.

While he certainly had lots to be cynical about later in life, it's interesting that scholars credit most of his poems to an earlier period where he seemed to be in good spirits and, by most standards, very successful. The cynicism we see in "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" crops up over and over again, however, as we continue to see Ralegh portraying Time as a ruthless force propelling us towards death and life as nothing more than a series of falsehoods and trivialities waiting to disappoint us.

"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"

Themes: Man and the Natural World, Immortality, Time, Foolishness & Folly

Man and the Natural World

Nature certainly has a big role to play in this poem, and it's not exactly complementary to man's existence. In "The Nymph's Reply," nature is a constant reminder that death is all around us. Nice, huh? Subsequently, the poem becomes a rejection of the pastoral view of the happy-go-lucky countryside put forth by Marlowe's shepherd. Still, Ralegh seems to acknowledge the natural progression from birth to death, but he fails to mention that what is dead rises again the following spring. Slight oversight there, Debbie Downer. His vision of death in nature without new life is, in some ways, just as unrealistic as Marlowe's portrayal of ever-blooming flowers that never wither or decay.

Questions About Man and the Natural World:

•       Why does Ralegh choose to use only the same natural images used by Marlowe? Would the poem be more or less effective if he introduced some of his own?

•       Why does the speaker's opinion about the inevitability of death and decay in the natural world spark the response that it does? Would not a response more in the carpe diem tradition be more fitting to the situation?

•       Is Ralegh's description of nature more or less realistic than that of Marlowe? Which one is more beautiful? Why?

•       Take a look at the third stanza. In a poem that uses very few descriptive words, what do you make of the speaker's description of fields as "wanton" and winter as "wayward"? Are there any other word choices that stand out to you as important? If so, what are they and what makes them stand out?

Debate the following statements:

• Ralegh's dismal portrayal of nature is a retaliation against the idealized way in which people in the 1600s viewed country life. Just say no!
• The withered bed of roses depicted in lines 13 and 15 is not a representation of decay in nature, but an extended metaphor for the inevitable disintegration of romantic love. Sad, and then double-sad.