29, 2009
"The Nymph's Reply to the Shephard" by Sir Walter Raleigh is a response to the poem "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe. In the Nymph's response, the satirizes and basically rejects the shepherd's offer of a relationship together. The nymph satirizes by rejecting and refuting the hypothetical world the shepherd offered the nymph. The shepherd offered the nymph a lovely, happy world if they were to be together. The nymph refutes that by stating that it is not possible, when she says "If all the world and love were young,and truth in every shepherd's tongue". This first line ruins the mood set up by the shepherd and She refutes it because his hypothetical world would be impossible to live in or reach due to the fact that he is a shepherd and therefore poor. Raleigh mocks the shepherd's poem by mimicking the alliteration and rhyme scheme used in Marlowe's poem, therefore adding a humorous touch to the poem. The last stanza, however shifts to an accepting tone, where the nymph states that if the world was how the shepherd promised, then she will surely be his love.