Poem Help:The Nymph's Reply To The Shepherd by sir walter raleigh. please help me understand line-by-line

Question

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 complains 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.

The 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.

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.

Answer 1

Raleighs reply to The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
by Christopher Marlowe
1599
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Raleigh argues that it is not society that taints sexual love. We are already tainted before we enter society. Releigh combines carpe diem with tempus fugit in an unusual way. Normally we should sieze the day because time flies. Raleigh argues that because time flies, we should NOT sieze the day. There will be consequences to their roll in the grass. Time does not stand still; winter inevitably follows the spring; therefore, we cannot act on impulses until we have examined the consequences.

The world is NOT young--we are not in Eden, but in this old fallen world - a world in which shepherds have actually been known to lie to their nymphs.

This poem by Sir Walter Raleigh uses the same meter and references to present "mirror images" of Marlowe's poem. The feminine persona (the nymph) of the poem sets up a hypothetical set of questions that undermine the intelligence of the man's offer because all that he offers is transitory. She reverses his images into negative ones:

* rocks grow cold
* fields yield to the harvest
* the flocks are driven to fold in winter
* rivers rage
* birds complain of winter (a reference to the story of Philomela who was raped and turned into a nightingale).


We live in a fallen world. Free love in the grass in impossible now because the world is not in some eternal spring. The seasons pass, as does time. Nymphs grow old, and shepherds grow cold.

Answer 2

The Nymphs Reply

Answer 3

The first two couplets speak of a woman wistfully considering the condition of new love in harmonious surroundings, if she could believe that pursuing Shepard's were honest, as an idyllic and seductive circumstance to be married.

Then she goes into stating the realities of life in the second two couplets, and how change happens to even the most experienced and wise leading to worrying about the future.

The next two couplets speak of aging and the inevitable fading glory that naturally comes in time's passing, and the general loss of vitality.

The couplets that follow speak of all things associated with the ceremonial celebration and adornment of loves union (basically a wedding) and how it's all fleeting and basically temporary.

The next two couplets reiterate the sentiment of the previous and state that it's not reason enough for the woman to stay and marry.

The final couplets speak wistfully in admiration of youth, while craving fresh, ever lasting love yearning for that certainty that it lasted and existed without wanting for anything, then knowing this, the woman would gladly take part in getting married.