❤️The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd🌹Sir Walter Raleigh | Musical Love Poem

The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd

by Sir Walter Raleigh (1600)

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.

But Time drives 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.

Written as a response to Christopher Marlowe's poem 'The Passionate Shepherd to His Love'. Raleigh’s work mirrors Marlowe’s line by line, but transforms the idealized pastoral vision into a reflection on time, decay, and mortality.

Theme: The Nymph rejects the shepherd’s invitation, pointing out that beauty, youth, and pleasure are fleeting — love built on such things cannot last.

Contrast:
Marlowe’s shepherd = idealist, romantic dreamer.
Raleigh’s nymph = realist, grounded in the truth of impermanence.

Together, these two poems form one of the most famous poetic dialogues in English literature — a conversation between idealism and realism, youth and experience, desire and wisdom.

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