The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd Analysis

     The poem I chose to analyze is "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd." I believe the theme of this poem is that no matter how good things may seem, they eventually go bad and will not be the amazing things that they once were. The message that the author is trying to get across here is that someone can be promised all the good in the world, but this still might not be enough. The theme and the author's message can be proven by the message each of the individual stanzas gives. Each of these stanza's is addressing the promises that were promised by the shepherd to the nymph for her love in Christopher Marlowe's poem "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love." In the first stanza, the nymph says that if she knew that this shepherd was telling the truth, then she may be inclined to believe everything he is saying and accept the idea of loving and living with him. However, as shown in the nest four stanzas, the nymph cannot trust what the shepherd is saying. In the second stanza, the nymph she talks of how nature changes and that it will not always stay warm and beautiful. In the third stanza, she also talks of how nature changes, due to winter, and how sweet words give way to unrealistic expectations that die fast. In the fourth stanza, the nymph says that all of the things the shepherd has promised her mean nothing because they will all break, die, or be forgotten at some point. Finally, in the fifth stanza, she says that all of the things the shepherd has promised are still not enough to convince her to be with him. The first five stanzas of the poem help to establish the overall theme of the poem.
     This poem also uses many different elements to add to the development of the theme. One element is the structure of the poem. The poem is made up of six stanzas. The first five stanzas all are used to build the theme, from the themes that each of the individual stanzas give. However, the final stanza is used as a way to question everything the speaker has said in the previous stanzas. The sudden change of events creates impact and leaves the reader wanting more and answers. This structure adds to the development of the theme because the first five stanzas build the theme while the sixth stanza allows the reader to question the poem's theme. Another element is literary devices. The major literary device this poem uses is allusion. The entirety of this poem is alluding to the poem "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe. Specific lines of Raleigh's poem that use the same words/wording and ideas of Marlowe's poem are line three and four, "These pretty pleasure might me move To live with thee and be thy love" and lines thirteen and fourteen "Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses, Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies." Another literary device that is found throughout the poem is alliteration. Examples of alliteration are seen in line three "pretty pleasure might me move," line four, "flocks from field to fold," and line 10 "wayward WInter." These two literary devices, especially the allusion, are important to the theme development because the whole theme of this poem is in response to Marlowe's poem that this poem is alluding to. The final element found in this poem is word choice. One way word choice is used in this poem is by using the sound of words to make a point. An example of this is the third stanza which uses soft and flowing smooth words, whose point is to contrast of the hashrness that the speaker is actually communicating in that stanza. The author also uses word choice to make a point in the fourth stanza when he uses simplistic non descriptive words that Marlowe used in his poem in a much more descriptive way. The point is that the less descriptive words show how unimportant these things are to the nymph. Finally the author uses word choice to put in words with double meaning. The words with double meaning in this poem are fancy, line 12, and means, line 19. These double meanings words foreshadow to the last stanza which questions everything that was said in the rest of the poem, giving the poem a second/double meaning. These are the different elements that help develop the theme.
     This poem was written during the Elizabethan Era. The Elizabethan Era took on many new themes that had not been seen in poetry prior to this point. Some of these themes fit in with this poems while others do not. The main themes of this time period were love and romantic relations, passage of time, effect of imprisonment, views on happy life, old age, advice to a son, true joy, and tributes to the dead. Clearly, the themes of love, passage of time, views on happy life, and true joy are all themes found within the poem. The speaker is talking in response to someone who wants her love and she has to establish what a happy and joyful life is to her when the passing of time most often changes things. However, the rest of these themes do not fit in with this poem. I thought that "The Nymph's Reply to the Sheperd" was actually fun to analyze because of having to compare it to another poem, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love."