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The great playwright Christopher Marlowe also wrote one of the most famous lyrical poems in British literature, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love." In this pastoral portrait, Marlowe reveals the shepherd's desire for a certain young lady to be his love. In "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd," Sir Walter Raleigh voices the young lady's answer to this invitation. The two poems share the identical structures of rhyme scheme and meter. Also, the speakers share a similar desire for youthful love. However, these similarities are overshadowed by the differences in the author's backgrounds which, in turn, influence the starkly different characteristics of the speakers of the poems--their view of reality and their motive for love.
One obvious similarity in the two poems is their structure. "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" mimics Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" exactly. Both poems consist of four-line stanzas, or quatrains. Also, each quatrain consists of the fusion of two rhyme couplets. Furthermore, the predominant meter in both poems is iambic tetrameter. This means that each line consists of four iambs, or two-syllable units of rhythm in which the first syllable is unstressed and the second is stressed. It seems quite appropriate and respectful that Raleigh would construct his reply in the same manner as Marlowe's poem. One might speculate, however, that Raleigh is instead subtly mocking Marlowe's strict structure which would serve to reinforce the nymph's subtle mocking of the shepherd. One other similarity lies within the words and feelings of the speakers of the two poems. Nature is a dominant theme throughout both poems and both the shepherd and the nymph share an obvious affection for the natural beauty th...
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...riences influence the differing thoughts and feelings of the shepherd and the nymph. Like the shepherd, Marlowe was somewhat of a social recluse without much experience in relationships. This is emulated in the shepherd's naïve wishful thinking that he and the nymph could share an eternal, youthful love. Similar to Marlowe's scandalous associations, the shepherd tries to seduce the nymph with a litany of gifts. Much like Raleigh's experiences with the Queen, the nymph knows that a relationship should be founded on more than transient gifts and empty promises. In the end, the nymph acknowledges that she would accept the shepherd's offer "could youth last" and "had joys no date" (21-22). Like the shepherd, she longs for such things to be true, but like Raleigh, she is a skeptic, retaining faith only in reason's power to discount the "folly" of "fancy's spring."
Ann Yearsley’s romantic poem The Indifferent Shepherdess to Colin, involves many link to relationships, as does Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus, however they both do in different ways. Yearsley’s poem is about romance and love. The swain called Colin has proposed to her and she has rejected because she knows acceptance will relegate her to a more subordinate status. She also wants Colin to be embarrassed because seduction would rob her of her independence.
Each poem is presented, and formatted in different senses. “To Sir John…” is structured to the reader as seven quatrains. It has a very set rhyme scheme that follows an ABAB pattern
Romance. In the two poems “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd,” the man wanted the women to move in with him and be his love. The man and the women have two different points of view. The guy’s point of view is he wants her to live with him. The girl’s point of view is she does not want to move in with the man.
The concept of love has long been the preferred topic of conversation among prominent male poets. Towards the closing of the sixteenth century, however, the emerging of the female poet took place. With the introduction of Queen Elizabeth, an initial path was now cleared for future women poets to share their views on the acclaimed topic of love. Due to this clashing of ideas, the conflicting views of two exceedingly different sexes could manifest itself. Who better to discuss the topic of love then Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who expresses her ideas with intelligence comparable to the best male poets, and Emerson, world renowned for his poignant opinions? In accordance with the long history of conflict between males and females, both Emerson’s "Give All to Love" and Browning’s "Sonnet 43" convey the pleasure love brings, but while Emerson’s poem urges the retention of individualism in a relationship, Browning pleads for a complete surrender to love.
Through reading the works by Marlowe and Raleigh it's determined that the shepherd had only sexual feelings for the Nymph. The poems showed no acts of love, only sexual desires that the Shepherd was feeling and a strong sense of rejection from the Nymph. The Nymph did an extraordinary job of standing up for herself. The Shepherd failed in his plan to trick the Nymph and ended up looking like a jackass.
In "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" he made many lines like "make the beds of roses And a thousand fragrant posies" and " With coral clasps and Amber studs". They show that he would get anything and go anywhere as long as she becomes his love. In the "Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" it showed a much different perspective. Lines like "Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten: In folly ripe, in reason rotten" bring a rather realistic point of view. She knows that all those object soon will wither and one day disappear, and that his reason for love was different than what she wanted. She want know objects that symbolizes his love but rather love from his
The three poems all focus on the idea of love. In “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”, the Shepherd is explaining all of the ways he can please his love. He says he will make her “a gown made of the finest wool”, and he tells her of many other valuable things he can give her in hopes that she will love him back. In “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”, the Nymph is focusing on the idea that love is not pure anymore. She states, “If all the world and love were young”, which implies that love is no longer young. In “Raleigh Was Right”, the speaker also believes that love is dying. He says, “love itself a flower with roots in a parched ground.” Love is one of the main focuses of these three poems.
Authors use poetry to creatively present attitudes and opinions. “A Man’s Requirements,” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment” are two poems with distinct attitudes about love that contain different literary approaches. In both of the poems, love is addressed from a different perspective, producing the difference in expectation and presentation, but both suggest the women are subservient in the relationships.
Love can have many faces in each of these poems we are given a glimpse at these two faces. “To His Coy Mistress “ is a poem about a man trying to persuade a woman into sex as the poem progresses the man becomes more and more desperate. It conveys a face of love that agrees more with lust and carnal desire. While in “Oranges” a poem about a young boy taking out a girl for the first time shows us a different face. This is a face that most of young love, which most of us are familiar with and that is anxious and excited, all wrapped into one. In these poems “To His Coy Mistress” uses tone and symbolism to convey this mans love in the form of lust, while “Oranges” uses these elements to convey the innocent love of the two adolescents.
Use of the couplet comes with negative connotations in poetry. Recent critics have deemed their use conservative, rigid and fundamentally predictable. However, I will argue that for many poets composing in heroic couplets, their neatness and symmetry allows a chance to contain and accurately express complex subjects too more accurately contained and precisely expressed than in more relaxed rhyme schemes. Subjects such as love and nature can be presented in measured line lengths that are still capable of changes of pace, conveying intense emotion with ease. Furthermore, the heroic couplet’s iambic pentameter provides perfect scope for naturalistic conversational musings and reactions to stimulus. One can consider these effects alongside the
Both Bob Dylan’s “Boots of Spanish Leather” and Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” utilize material gifts, but each use these materials to draw different conclusions. The speaker in “Boots of Spanish Leather” is offered an ultimately asks for gifts from his lover as a consolation, whereas the speaker in “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” offers gifts to his lover in an effort to manipulate them. This demonstrates the true basis of both relationships- the first poem exhibits a romantic love, the other desire.
These two poems are alike and different in their own way. The Passionate Shepherd to His Love and The Nymphs Reply to the Shepherd are both trying to mirror each other on their structure of the poems. Both Christopher Marlowe and Sir Walter Raleigh had a very unique way of writing and making these poems so similar, but throwing in different types of love and view points.
In order to decide how to spend one’s day without a clear thought of there being a tomorrow, I believe that a level of maturity and experience must be gained and met, due to the unpredictable results of one’s actions. In the two poems between the shepherd and the nymph, the shepherd takes the position of living in the moment, while the nymph takes the position of using the time and day to prepare for the future rather than just live for the moment. After taking both of these perspectives, I seem to speculate more upon the nymph’s point of view, because her response to the shepherd’s offer w...
The Poet's Treatment of Seduction in To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell and The Passionate Shepherd To His Love by Christopher Marlowe
In the poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” the author’s tone is exaggerated. He speaks to his love that everything will be impeccable if she moved in with him. He states that there will even be “Melodious birds sing madrigals”(Marlowe, page 598). The author makes it seem dreamy to the reader. The author is trying to make the poem as romantic as possible to win over her love. He states that he will make “And I will make thee beds of roses” and “With a buckles of the purest gold.” Shepherds did not make enough money in the 1500’s to be able to afford gold; therefore his over the top assertions are just a few things that show how unrealistic he is. In “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” the author is mocking Mr. Marlowe’s poem. He is putting a stop to