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The Nymph's Reply To The Shepherd Analysis

Decent Essays

By seeing the title “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” you know that it is a response to someone or something that has already been written. In this case, it is true that this poem was a response to Christopher Marlowe's poem, “ The Passionate Shepherd to his Love”. Both Marlowe and Sir Raleigh have a different but unique way of writing which makes their poems very similar but not the same . As you read them both you will clearly understand the question being asked by Marlowe and the response from Sir Raleigh. These poems symbolize many of the same things just in different ways, with one being idealistic and one realistic. Both of these poems represent a point of views from each side of a proposal, even though they have some similar points, they are more different than similar. By looking closely at both poems, you can see that Marlowe’s poem is based on the Shepherd confessing his love to a woman and Sir Raleigh’s poem is based on the response from the woman. Both Writers used the flock of sheep in their poem, Marlowe wrote “And we set upon the rock/ seeing shepherds feed their flocks” and in response from Sir Raleigh the woman says “Time drives the flocks from field the fold”. The “love” the shepherd has for her is more like lust than love. The shepherd is not thinking about the future and what is to come to him, he is just living in the moment. So when he said they would sit and look at the flock he did not take into consideration that as time passes the flock begins to move to different fields, as will his feelings. The Shepherd believes that he is madly in love with her when he says ”Come with me and be my love,/ And we will all the pleasures prove”. But, not once did he did bring up how she is, which makes you believe that he did not want her for her but for her looks. As she gets older her looks will fade and return into dust, his love will fade because she does not look as she did the woman replys with “Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies /Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten, / In folly ripe, in reason rotten.” Which is stating that all the materialistic stuff he is trying to tempt her with will fade and wither away just like his “love”. The woman knows the the “love” the Shepherd has for

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