Blithe Milks

Writing Sample

Shepherd and Nymph: A Conversation

In order to fully appreciate the conversation between the three poems written by Christopher Marlowe, Sir Walter Raleigh, and C. Day Lewis, one must first look at each poem in isolation. As in any conversation the responses focus on a few aspects of what has been said to them and ignore the others. Sometimes what is not responded to is just as important as the things that are addressed. Sometimes responses are just to the tone of voice. It’s not just what one says, but how one says it.

Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” (see appendix A) seems like a perfectly straightforward invitation to a life of pastoral idleness offered by a simple dreamer of a young man. If we begin at the beginning we can peel back the layers that Marlowe provides and take it from a simple pastoral love poem to a fuller appreciation for the female and suggestive yet subtle invitation of sexual exploration.

On first reading, the voice of the poem seems light and idealistic. There is no concern for the outside world or its realities. The only concession to the world being a less than perfect place is the mention of the cold, which can be staved off with lined slippers. The shepherd is young and so is the year. Everything is burgeoning with life; there are lambs in the meadows and the birds are singing madrigals, love songs. The world is bursting forth its bounty and the young lover is probably feeling inspired and so offers up impractical, yet beautiful, love tokens.

While the idea of a bed of fragrant flowers sounds nice, it would be impractical; the addition of roses, in an age before the advent of the thorn-less variety, sounds downright painful.  A cap of flowers sounds lovely, especially since women have been adorning their hats with flowers and feathers for centuries. But why a cap, when daisies are so easily made into crowns?  While myrtle is a beautiful aromatic often associated with the goddess Venus, it is also the easiest rhyme with “kirtle” and our shepherd may want an excuse to mention his love’s petticoat. A gown from wool is lovely, but I think a shepherd would know better than to pull it off of lambs, especially so early in the season. That the belt he makes her of straw and ivy buds is clasped with coral and amber highlights the fact that the only metal our speaker has mentioned is “the purest gold.” While the wool, the flowers, and the songs of birds and “shepherds’ swains” may be free, or nearly such, gold, amber and coral are highly prized.

        The luxury that our “shepherd” wishes to lavish on his love is the luxury of one who is privileged. The persona of the shepherd has been appropriated for effect. No shepherd could hope to acquire buckles of gold for slippers, amber imported from the frozen north, or coral which was coveted by the queen. While they are all natural materials that are beautiful untouched by man, they are still beyond the reach of the typical shepherd. The speaker of this poem has taken the voice of a shepherd to evoke the pastoral qualities associated with the perceived leisure afforded men who spend their days in fields; but not the experience that knows beds of flowers are full of stems and that straw makes a terrible belt. The appreciation of the natural figures and forms that our “shepherd” calls up and hopes to benefit by do not end with the flowers and birds. Men of leisure have time to expand their imaginative powers.

        The title of the poem is “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”; “passion”, when not in reference to Christ, has always had a sexual undertone. The very title calls up lusty emotion; the first stanza also conjures a sensual overture. “Valleys, groves, hills, and fields, woods, or steepy mountain” may, to an equally lusty and pastoral mind, conjure images of the female form in recline. Substituting hills for hips, valleys for cleft between the thighs and breasts, woods and groves tufts of hair and secret places where it is absent, steepy mountains as breasts; none of these associations require much of a leap of imagination. “And we will all the pleasures prove that” your naked form “yields”. This is the voice of a man who offers his love undergarments embroidered with fragrant, sensual herbs sacred to the goddess of love. The next three stanzas invoke the senses with: sight, watching the shepherds: hearing, listening to the birds; smell, of roses and posies, and touch, with fine wool and cold. Mentioning cold is a nice touch; our shepherd has a plan for shielding his love from it.

        With all of his plans laid out, benign or sexual, it is still just an invitation. However his love chooses to interpret his invitation is out of his hands; all he needs to do now is wait for her reply. Sir Walter Raleigh attempted just that with “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” (see appendix B).

        It is difficult to disassociate Raleigh’s reply from the invitation made by Marlowe because there are so many direct references, but the tone is very different. Raleigh’s nymph is practical. The first two lines belie the fact that this nymph has some worldliness that she finds her suitor to be deficient in. She is worldly in such a way that she seems jaded compared to her shepherd’s naiveté. In essence, she tells her shepherd that if the world were perpetually in spring, if all love were at the beginning, blossoming stage, and men of nature were trustworthy his offer might be tempting. As it stands, the spring will turn eventually to winter, warmth will disappear, the birds will cease to sing, and sensible people will worry about how to survive the winter. The sheep are in fenced fields to keep them from wandering off and to keep them from being stolen, shepherds are no longer in the fields. Time ravages all things: flowers, fields, promises, reason, and love. Whoever this nymph is replying to, she does not believe that he lives in reality. He is offering her momentary perfection; she is reminding him that his ideas and proposals are preposterous to anyone who recognizes that fall and winter will eventually follow spring and summer.

        Stanza three is a continuation of the aging theme introduced in stanza two, but here there is a hint of experience. She seems to know whereof she speaks when she talks of “a honey tongue, a heart of gall.” She knows that sweet talkers with bitter emotions, or sweet talkers who woo bitter women, will bring their own and the wooed’s destruction. I believe that she has been down this path before. The only acknowledgement the nymph makes to his subtle sexual advances is that she wants nothing to do with them. Wantonness brings reckoning. She practically ignores the sensual in favor of making the shepherd look for all the world to be an idle dreamer. She shuts down the sexual part of their relationship before it begins by ignoring it.

        The nymph is resolute. She will not live with the shepherd and be his love unless youth and love never aged, or if they did age that they had no needs. The tone of the poem, however, makes it hard to believe that she is holding out any hope of that ever happening.

        C. Day Lewis’ “Song” (see appendix C) may be melodious, but it is not very tempting. It is an invitation to working class reality. There is no romance except in the lilting quality of the rhyming couplets.

        The speaker is promising nothing more than “chance employment.” Since this is all he can offer, she will be able only to read about fashionable clothing, her waterfront view will be of a rancid canal, and if there are to be love songs, she will hear them by chance. She will age prematurely from worry; her feet will perpetually hurt from working all day in shoes that are probably less than comfortable. The next phrase is a brilliant turn on meaning. In centuries past “tire” could be used as an abridgement of “attire” and could be used as a verb. “Not silken dress but toil shall tire thy loveliness,” is a wonderful, if depressing, play upon the antique usage. Here the two uses of the word are a playful touch. Work will drain the loveliness out of her; she will wear her toil over her loveliness. Both ideas work, and the knowledge of two interpretations is exciting. The last stanza also has a surprising word with two interpretations, but one is the least likely.  “Hunger shall make thy modest zone / and cheat fond death of all but bone.” Zone is an area, and hunger will make her area less; but zone also used to mean a woman’s belt or waist cincher. There is a possibility that the speaker intends this use playfully, that being hungry is good for her figure, but I’m not as convinced of this word’s double usage as the dual uses of “tire.” However, if it is intended, it feeds into the cynicism that seems to have incited this poem. The speaker knows that he has nothing of worth to offer, no money or any prospects for ever having any. He seems sincere in wanting her to be his love, but he knows how little he has to offer and so uses his wit and charm to try to sway her.

        There will be dainties, but I will be a waiter serving them. There will be lovely frocks, but you will only see them in magazines (not even in person on other women, we will be that poor). The wreath on your brow will be of worry wrinkles; and the only surety of footwear will be pain. But at least you will have a water view (though it will smell bad), and a slim waist (due to constant hunger). This man offers nothing but honesty, a sense of humor, and love. In a romantic world, it just might work.

        When looking at each poem after reading the other two some elements are pushed forward; others are pushed to the back. Reading Marlowe in light of Raleigh reduces the effect of the sexual connotations. Reading Marlowe in light of Lewis highlights the frivolousness of the proposal; it strips it of sincerity. Reading Raleigh in light of Marlowe gives the poem the question it appears to be answering; it completes the poem. Lewis seems to be rephrasing Marlowe’s questions in light of Raleigh’s nymph’s response. They all speak to each other and less to the audience the more they are read together. They are one conversation, but it still doesn’t have a conclusion.

        Before reading the nymph’s response, the shepherd was wrapped up in the sensual world and as long as the two lovers had each other they would want for nothing. The world was full of abundance and the shepherd could lavish his love with every excess and extravagance without money (assuming he could find gold, amber, and coral). The nymph’s response to the shepherd takes his offerings and turns them from warm spring of hope to cold winter. The sheep he wants to watch in the fields have been penned up, the birds have ceased to sing, flowers are fading, and the burgeoning field will pay the price once winter comes. The nymph chastises the shepherd for being impractical. The clothing and bed made of plants “soon break, soon wither,” and they are also “soon forgotten.” Is this an indictment of the fickle nature of men and their piecrust promises?

In the third stanza the nymph has already accused the shepherd of having “a honey tongue,” and in the first stanza she says that in order for her to be tempted by his offer there would have to be “truth in every shepherd’s tongue.” I believe that the “heart of gall” in stanza three is the nymph’s; she has been made promises by lying sweet talkers before. She has a bitter heart that will only lead to unhappiness for both of them once the bloom is off the rose.

The fourth stanza is the most damning for our poor shepherd, I think. “In folly ripe, in reason rotten.” That one line does not speak well of the shepherd’s mind. The nymph may as well come right out and call him foolish and be done with it. And no woman, not even a nymph, wants a foolish man. The nymph begins and ends her response to the shepherd conceding that if the world were always as the shepherd described it, always spring and love always young, she might think about it; but as it stands, the boy is a fool and should stop wasting her time. This answer is mulled over and responded to in “Song”.

        Lewis’ “Song” takes the first two lines and the last two lines from Marlowe, ensuring continuity, and gives the nymph an honest invitation. It may be too honest. The question is still, if I can tempt you with these offerings will you “live with me and be my love”? But the offerings are reflective of the nymph’s rejection. The nymph called the shepherd frivolous and foolish; the new invitation mentions lovely things only in relation to some kind of denial or suffering on the love’s part. This is much more realistic, but after reading Marlowe and then Raleigh this invitation is less sincere. It is as though the one making the overture does know what it will take to live with his love and no longer cares if she will take him up on it. It seems to be an attitude of “You want honest? Fine I’ll give you honest, but you aren’t going to like it”; thus it feels like an equal and opposite reaction to the original invitation.

This conversation is full of hyperbole. First, the shepherd aggrandizes the natural world and boasts how it would provide for the young lovers. The nymph responds that for every spring there is a killing winter, but she never goes beyond that to the renewal of a new spring. She is happy to just kill his love and the bounty of nature. Lewis’ speaker’s response takes the shepherd in the opposite direction taking cues from the nymph that grasshoppers who play all summer will die come winter. So he offers her the life of an ant. All work, no play; there will be no excess, no frivolity. There is no eternal spring; you and I will age as will our love.

        By looking at Lewis’ response as the response given by Marlowe’s shepherd; if Lewis’ speaker is that same shepherd continuing the conversation his response is just as damning of the nymph as the nymph is of the original overture. It is as though he is asking her if she really wants the truth. If he had offered her the truth, no fragrant beds or beautiful songs for her amusement, would she be so eager to accept? Of course she wouldn’t. No one marries their love expecting only the “for poorer” or “in sickness” clauses to apply to their relationship. Lewis’ shepherd is letting the nymph know what a killjoy she is; she has no sense of romance. Perhaps if she responds favorably to the second offer, he would not want her in return.

        If this interpretation of the nymph holds true, she has no romance, there will be no need for a reply from her. In order to continue the dialogue begun 400 years ago, the nymph will have to prove, in rhyming couplet, that she is a romantic, that she does appreciate hyperbole; but that it must be tempered by reality to be in the least bit tempting. Time will tell if someone picks up her end of the conversation. Perhaps someday, the nymph and the shepherd will live together and be one another’s love.

Appendix A

“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” 
by Christopher Marlowe 
1599 

Come live with me and be my love, 
And we will all the pleasures prove 
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields 
Woods or steepy mountain yields

And we will sit upon the rocks, 
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks 
By shallow rivers to whose falls 
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses 
And a thousand fragrant posies, 
A cap of flower, and a kirtle 
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool 
Which from our pretty lambs we pull; 
Fair lined slippers for the cold 
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds, 
With coral clasps and amber studs; 
And if these pleasures may thee move, 
Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing 
For thy delight each May morning: 
If these delights thy mind may move, 
Then live with me and be my love.

Appendix B

“The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd” 
by Sir Walter Raleigh 
1600 

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; 
The rest complain of cares to come.

The flowers do fade, and wanton fields 
To wayward winter reckoning yields; 
A honey tongue, a heart of gall, 
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy bed of roses, 
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies, 
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten, 
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.

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

Appendix C

“Song”
By Cecil Day-Lewis

1938

Come, live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of peace and plenty, bed and board,
That chance employment may afford.

I’ll handle dainties on the docks
And thou shalt read of summer frocks:
At evening by the sour canals
We’ll hope to hear some madrigals.

Care on thy maiden brow shall put
A wreath of wrinkles, and thy foot
Be shod with pain: not silken dress
But toil shall tire thy loveliness.

Hunger shall make thy modest zone
And cheat fond death of all but bone—
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.