When was the nymphs reply to the shepherd written

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. Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem.

The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem. Marlowe's Poem — The work that inspired the nymph's reply. The School of Night — A short article about the writers group to which both Raleigh and Marlowe belonged. LitCharts Teacher Editions. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. His works include, The Historie of the World In five bookes , The Discovery of Guiana and a lot of poems in which many were unfinished.

His poems were mostly short and were influenced by real incidents. His writing style was plain, straightforward and were not ornamental. He resisted Italian Renaissance. His works mostly contained the themes such as love, loss, beauty and time Universal.

He was bewitching her with seductive lyrics by portraying their future life with full of intense sensual pleasure. If all the world and love were young,.

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,. Ralegh was incredibly private with his poetry, however, and he banked on the fact that his poems wouldn't be printed to keep him out of the limelight. As poems had a way of doing, though, "The Nymph's Reply" eventually sneaked its way into print around the same time that "The Passionate Shepherd" was also making its first printed debut both had likely been circulating in manuscript for several years prior.

It's hard to say for sure, but it seems likely that the popularity of Marlowe was one of the things that launched "The Nymph's Reply" and Ralegh the poet into the literary canon, saving them for the rest of history to enjoy. So remember this, Shmoopsters: if you don't have anything nice to say, turn those insults into a poem and maybe one day you'll be famous, too!

How different would your life be if you knew that you'd never get old? Would you travel more? Take more risks? Less risks? Have more hobbies? Would you be happier than you are now? Everyone's answer to this question will be different, but it's a hypothetical that has captivated poets and song writers for centuries, the most recent incarnation being the song "We Are Young" by the band F.

If you were in high school or college in , you know exactly what we're talking about; you've heard this song no less than times, can sing it in your sleep, and probably included it on a very poignant graduation playlist that your friends blared on the way to beach week. This song is the "Forever Young" of the millennial generation, an anthem dedicated to celebrating youth in all its beauty and indiscretions. Giving a materialistic gift to the nymph would be folly.

The real world that she attempts to show in her rejection of the shepherd predicates the fourth and final theme within the poem, the understanding of time.

Through a better understanding of mortality, reasoning, love, and time, the nymph sets out to help the shepherd comprehend the foundation of her rejection, why a life together would not work. Through the undying timeless beauty that is the nymph, it seems as though the shepherd has lost all consciousness of reasoning as he attempts to fabricate his love for her through gifts and mortal standards or ideals. From the beginning, it should have seemed to the shepherd that this relationship could have no avail, and that simple deductive reasoning would bring about a quick denouement.

The lack of reasoning is what creates this poem, and throughout the text, the nymph tries to revive reason within the shepherd. The lack of human reasoning throughout time is alluded to within the last lines of the second-to-last stanza. Brooke goes one step further and relates these lines to the creation story within the Bible. In the beginning, there was still reasoning, for there was free will; free will will encompass reasoning because of the brain's natural ability to put value on right and wrong.

It always seems hardest to explain reason, when those who you are reasoning with have no sense to listen. As the nymph rejects the shepherd, she focuses on helping the shepherd realize that he is not in love with her, but in lust.

The aspect of explaining his folly must be the most difficult task in her trilemma. If at first reasoning fails, surely the task of making someone realize their lust over love must prove to be much more difficult. By saying these lines, the nymph clearly expresses that the shepherd's love for her is much like a momentary season and will soon pass out of existence, just as summer must one day turn to winter. With the passing of this feeling, the shepherd will come to realize what the nymph had been trying to tell him the entire time, and he will realize that all he had offered such as gifts and emotion eventually wither and fade.

She tells him that not even the deepest love between two beings can last, that young love grows old, and never stays young. She states that neither her world, nor the world of the shepherd stays the same, and she determines that everything grows with age, just as love will grow and eventually die with the mortality of the human body. However, there is a twist at the end of the poem where the nymph speculates on impossibility.

In the last stanza, the nymph shows signs of the first glimmer of positive hope:. For the first time, we are given the thought of what the nymph would be like if she were mortal. It helps show that even though all odds seem against certain something, there can still be a glimpse of hope left in the mind. It concludes the end to all things as they eventually will rot once the life has been taken from them.

The emotion of life moves forward to the final thematic element of time. The understanding of time and how the nymph uses it in her argument is the most important issue within this poem.

Through time, the nymph shows the exhausting energy of human nature, pointing out that there is a beginning which is followed by an end. From the moment Adam ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, mankind was burdened with the knowledge of passing time and the realization of death.