Perspectives

Literary perspective

The poem “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe is an example of a pastoral poem. Pastoral poetry is one of the oldest forms of poetry, going as far back as Ancient Greece. It presents an ideal countryside landscape, focusing on simple rural pleasures and the modest life of shepherds. Pastoral poetry often explores the theme of…

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Textual perspectives

The poem “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” by Sir Walter Raleigh is a response to Marlowe’s poem. “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” presents the lover’s point of view as she implies that the shepherd’s ideas about romantic love are naïve. The nymph tells the shepherd that time changes everything, and love does not last forever. She rejects the shepherd’s material gifts saying that in time they will also become meaningless. When comparing the two poems it would be useful to look at the two opposing points of view and how the two speakers see love.
The poem “The World is Too Much with Us” by William Wordsworth also explores the the…