Raleigh argues that it is not society that taints sexual love. We are already tainted before we enter society. Releigh combines carpe diem with tempus fugit in an unusual way. Normally we should sieze the day because time flies. Raleigh argues that because time flies, we should NOT sieze the day. There will be consequences to their roll in the grass. Time does not stand still; winter inevitably follows the spring; therefore, we cannot act on impulses until we have examined the consequences.
The world is NOT young--we are not in Eden, but in this old fallen world - a world in which shepherds have actually been known to lie to their nymphs.
This poem by Sir Walter Raleigh uses the same meter and references to present "mirror images" of Marlowe's poem. The feminine persona (the nymph) of the poem sets up a hypothetical set of questions that undermine the intelligence of the man's offer because all that he offers is transitory. She reverses his images into negative ones:
rocks grow cold
fields yield to the harvest
the flocks are driven to fold in winter
rivers rage
birds complain of winter (a reference to the story of Philomela who was raped and turned into a nightingale).
We live in a fallen world. Free love in the grass in impossible now because the world is not in some eternal spring. The seasons pass, as does time. Nymphs grow old, and shepherds grow cold.