Love has always been an eternal resource of inspiration for poets. Sentimental and flattering, love helps to reveal the most hidden feeling and emotions. Therefore, the narrators use vivid poetic elements to describe this flourishing phenomenon. This paper seeks to explore how love is addressed in the poems “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” written by two influential poets of the 17th century.
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
The most famous English Renaissance poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” was written by Christopher Marlowe in the early 1590s. This poem was meant to celebrate love, youth, and innocence and was not a mere manual on how to be a shepherd. The author resorts to a reader asking to be his lover, that is, Marlowe seduces a listener to elope with him in the country and live there with him. The theme of love is vividly expressed in the lines:
“And we will sit upon the Rocks,
Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks” (Marlowe 67).
Marlowe’s love is quiet and untouchable – he wants to merely appreciate the scenery with his lover keeping their affair private and not concerning about responsibilities. The speaker refuses to admit any problems, troubles, or shortcomings into the world that he imagines being occupied with his “love.” Instead, he encourages his love to simply live in the present moment, enjoying the sensual pleasures that he enumerates for their own sake, without worrying about the consequences (Grantley and Roberts 47). The speaker offers these pleasures as an escape from responsibility and consequences. The poet also presumes the idea that love should be pure and pleasurable: “And we will all the pleasures prove” (Marlowe 67). He offers his potential lover groves, alleys, hills, a bed of roses, and other joys he is ready to grant.
Moreover, the speaker considers the countryside as an exceptionally delightful place; therefore, he pays much attention to the objects and materials of nature such as “straw”, “roses”, “ivy-buds”, and others. Daydreaming, he correlates these objects to the body of his lover, embodying these materials into garments and a bed. The way that the speaker excitingly utilizes these articles infers a profound thought: he appears to need to have their place and court his “love”, to pay special attention to the body of the cherished.
To sum everything up, it is necessary to state that “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” depicts love as innocent, youthful, careless, and passionate. Marlowe communicates the theme of love through his perception of rural life and the embodiment of its objects. Moreover, the analogy with the objects of nature reflects that the feeling of love may be in full blossom but eventually will fade away.
The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
Sir Walter Raleigh presumably presented his poem at the beginning of the 17th century. This poem also reflects the theme of love and its correspondence to nature. This connection is expressed through imagery and conflict. These literary elements are used to communicate the beauty of both nature and love and to demonstrate that they do not last forever. The line “When rivers rage and rocks grow cold” (Raleigh and Wotton 11) presents the simultaneous usage of conflict and imagery. Moreover, the rocks are likely to be a metaphor of a shepherd’s heart, and the river stands for him. His heart goes cold as the time passes by and the river flows just as he is drawn over her by her beauty. Then, in the lines “The flowers do fade, and wanton fields, / To wayward winter reckoning yields”, a reader can observe the central idea that love and nature are not eternal though beautiful (Raleigh and Wotton 11).
The battle between love and lust is also valued by many authors of the poem as a critical aspect of criticism. In the lines “and Philomel is dumb, / the rest complain of the cares to come”, Raleigh depicts a refined picture of true love against shepherd’s lust (Raleigh and Wotton 11). In saying these lines, the nymph explicitly expresses that the shepherd’s affection for her is much like the fleeting season of the year, and will soon disappear, just as summer turns to winter at once. The nymph uses the analogy of love doomed to death to designate the shepherd’s love as only a fleeting feeling that will soon pass. With this feeling gone, the shepherd will understand what the nymph has been trying to tell him all this time, and he will know that everything he has offered, such as gifts and emotions, will eventually wither and disappear.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it seems reasonable to state that the theme of love has always been popular amongst poets, and they used the most picturesque literary elements to express it. Both Marlowe and Raleigh used the analogy with nature to convey the idea of pure and innocent but non-lasting love. However, the first poem reminds an appeal to someone’s feelings; meanwhile, the second poem represents a monologue about the love which is fading away.
Works Cited
Grantley, Darryll, and Roberts, Peter. Christopher Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture. Rutledge, 2018.
Marlowe, Christopher. “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.” Complete Poems. Dover Publications, 2003, p. 67.
Raleigh, Walter, and Wotton, Henry. “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd.” The Poems of Sir Walter Raleigh. George Bell and Sons, 1910, pp.11-12.