The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

“The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” by Sir Walter Raleigh (1660)

Sir Walter Raleigh’s playful reply to “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” also parodies Marlowe’s poem. In a line-for-line refutation of Marlow’s poem, the nymph rejects the shepherd’s affections and his courtship offer. As in Marlowe’s poem, Raleigh follows similar meter and rhyme, relying on six quatrains and using an AABB rhyme scheme, and it is also written in the pastoral style.

“Raleigh Was Right” by William Carlos Williams (1940)

Published in May 1940, William Carlos William composed “Raleigh Was Right” in response to the exchange that happens between “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd.” Williams’s poem does not utilize the six stanza, quatrain form. It utilizes repetition, assonance, and alliteration to create voice and tone. The poem also uses enjambment. Like the speaker in “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd,” the speaker in “Raleigh was Right” asserts that the idyllic reality the shepherd proposes is unattainable and not realistic.

“When You Are Old” by William Butler Yeats (1893)

Published in 1893 as part of Yeats’s collection The Rose, “When You Are Old” thematically resembles “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.