Christopher Marlowe

The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd

Conditional opening

The poem begins with 'If'—not a statement but a rejection disguised as agreement. The nymph accepts the shepherd's premise only to dismantle it.

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;

Philomel becometh dumb

[CONTEXT] Philomel is the nightingale from Ovid's Metamorphoses, symbol of eternal song. When she goes silent, even nature's permanence fails. This is the poem's turning point—if even the nightingale can't sustain beauty, neither can promises.

The rest complains of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;

Heart of gall

Gall is bitterness and poison. A 'honey tongue' (sweet words) conceals a 'heart of gall' (cruelty). This line names the specific deception: romantic language masking indifference or harm.

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 reason rotten.

In folly ripe, in reason rotten

A paradox: what seems mature (ripe) is actually foolish; what seems decayed (rotten) is actually wisdom. The nymph inverts the shepherd's value system—his gifts are backwards.

Belt of straw and ivy buds

The shepherd's gifts are perishable materials, not precious metals. Straw and ivy are literally weeds. The nymph catalogs these humble offerings to show how quickly they decay—unlike the permanent love he promises.

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,

The conditional return

The final stanza circles back to 'If'—but now the nymph names the impossible condition: youth that lasts forever, joys with no end date. She's not rejecting love; she's rejecting the lie that it can survive time.

Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.
Source

Reading Notes

A Reply to Marlowe's 'The Passionate Shepherd to His Love'

CONTEXT This poem is Sir Walter Raleigh's direct response to Christopher Marlowe's famous shepherd poem (published 1599). Marlowe's shepherd promises eternal pastoral pleasure: 'Come live with me and be my love, / And we will all the pleasures prove.' Raleigh's nymph systematically dismantles every promise.

The structure is deceptive. The nymph accepts the shepherd's logic ('If all the world and love were young') only to show it's impossible. She's not being coy or playing hard-to-get—she's being rational. Time is not metaphorical in this poem; it's the actual mechanism that destroys everything: flocks move to fold, rivers rage, flowers fade, gifts rot. Marlowe's shepherd ignores mortality. Raleigh's nymph won't.

Notice the catalog of decay in stanza 4: gowns, shoes, beds of roses, cap, kirtle, posies. Each item is listed, then dismissed with the same rhythm: 'Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten.' This isn't romantic melancholy—it's inventory. The nymph is doing the mathematics of time that the shepherd refuses to do.

Language as Weapon: Honey and Gall

The poem's central insight appears in stanza 3: 'A honey tongue, a heart of gall, / Is fancy's spring but sorrow's fall.' The nymph isn't rejecting the shepherd's words because they're false—she's rejecting them because their sweetness masks something bitter. Fancy (romantic imagination) is a spring that inevitably becomes autumn. This is not a metaphor about seasons; it's a claim about the structure of desire itself.

Raleigh's nymph speaks in concrete, almost legal language. She doesn't deny the shepherd's feelings; she denies his premises. 'All these in me no means can move / To come to thee and be thy love.' The repetition of this refrain (echoing Marlowe's original) turns the shepherd's own language into evidence against him. By the final stanza, when she offers her own conditional ('But could youth last'), she's not being romantic—she's being honest about what would actually need to be true for his promise to work. And since it can't be true, the answer remains no.