Nymph’s reply

Pastoral was a huge fad in Elizabethan England. Marlowe’s brief song of the shepherd exemplifies the conventions of the genre:

Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks, Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow rivers to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses And a thousand fragrant posies, A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool Which from our pretty lambs we pull; Fair lined slippers for the cold, With buckles of th purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds, With coral clasps and amber studs: And if these pleasures may thee move, Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherds’ swains shall dance and sing For thy delight each May morning: If these delights thy mind may move, Then live with me and be my love.

Walter Ralegh, like Cervantes, thought the shepherdess should have a chance to answer, and wrote a counter-conventional poem, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” that punctures the idyllic deathless Arcadia of Marlowe’s pastoral setting. Et in Arcadia Ego .

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.

Time drives the 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 season 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.