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Analyzation of "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" (Chad Rice)
chadster987 Sep 28, 2009
"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" by Sir Walter Raleigh gives an interesting take on "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe in that it describes the unrealistic love for which the shepherd is striving. The nymph elaborates by saying that if times were simpler and so many socioeconomic expectations did not need to be met, perhaps their love could flourish. As the world grows older and time progresses, the shepherd will eventually fail and he will not be able to support the nymph; as reality sets in, his dreams will be revealed as implausible. The nymph realizes this and, in order to hide this fact, the shepherd must, essentially, lie about what he sees or wants for them.
The nymph states that all the great promises and fanciful dreams that shepherd posits for them will not make her love him because while their fulfillment would be nice, she knows that he could not accomplish them for her. Having ideas of a future together and to be in lust would be pleasurable in the moment, but in the long run it would only cause the two misery as the relationship encounters hardships and eventually dies in a sad, disastrous ending because the relationship is not founded and has no stability. If the two could be young forever and be able to live on love alone, the couple might succeed but because there is so much more to a relationship than love itself, they need to be realistic and realize that they can never be together.