"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...
Any questions?
Email me: ms.k.keenan (at) gmail.com
"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.
