The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd by Sir Walter Raleigh: Summary and Analysis

The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd by Sir Walter is a poetic response and a parody of the poem The Passionate Shepherd to His love by Christopher Marlowe. A young girl is the speaker in this poem who replies realistically and sometimes pessimistically to the optimistic shepherd of Marlowe's poem.

The shepherd was the follower of the Carpe diem theme and believes in the present pleasures, but the lady in this poem believes in the reality of the life and retorts the shepherd for his idle life.

In the beginning of the poem the lady starts to doubt that if the world and the lovers remain young and the shepherd is telling the truth, then she might be persuaded by the pleasures of the world that he has offered to her to be with his love. But as it is not so, she puts her opinions to reply him in the ground of reality. The lady shows him the reality of time and change. The river side where the shepherd had promised to sit may rage and the rocks may grow cold and the bed of roses may fade. All the gifts he had offered gowns, shoes, beds of Roses, cap, kirtle, and posies are temporary. They sooner or later die, decay and wither. So these fanciful things do not bring any charm to her to be his love. These things are the attractions only to the foolish people who are unaware of the reality of the change in season and time. The lady believes that nothing on the earth is permanent. Taking the mythical reference of Philomel, she fears that she may be raped like Philomel. Philomel was lucky to sing her torture through her song as she became Nightingale. But the Nymph will not get any chance to share her sufferings. Time changes and the nature of the promises will also change. The beloved will transform into wife and love will change into duty and responsibility. She is sure that his honey tongue will be the real source of her pain and suffering in the future.

In the final stanza, she wishes that those things of fancy, such as lasting youth, ‘had joys no date’, ‘age no need’, to be true and would love to the shepherd, but as she is doubtful and is confirmed on the temporary nature of the material things, she would not accept his love proposal. The speaker believes in the reason and reality.

The shepherd in The Passionate Shepherd to his love sounds very confident from the beginning to the end of the poem that she would accept his proposal and be his love. But on the contrary, the lady in The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd is mocking at the foolish assumption of the Shepherd and his baseless attitude. It seems she is rather looking for something timeless and ageless, but the shepherd is merely offering the worldly things which are perishable and transient. The lady mostly uses negative imagery such as ‘rage’, ‘cold’ and ‘reckoning’ of the fields. This depicts her distrust on the shepherd and also clarifies that she would not accept his offer to be his love.