A Comparison of Marlowe and Ralegh

” These aren’t gentle shots that Ralegh is taking here. Is Ralegh implying that the shepherd is full of deliberate falsehoods or merely a romantic fool with a poor grounding in reality? Either way, it’s not a flattering portrait. But just to make sure that his message has been heard, the shepherd takes it up a notch in the sixth and final stanza. Ralegh begins the nonstop negativity with the notion that “time drives the flocks from field to fold / When rivers rage and rocks grow cold. The second stanza starts the process of using Marlowe’s pastoral delights against the shepherd. ” What else could be more romantic than this simple and honest request?

The counterpoint to Marlowe’s poem is Sir Walter Ralegh’s “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd. He promises to “dance and sing / For thy delight each May morning. ” The final two lines of the stanza and the poem (23-24) end in much the same way that the last two lines of stanza five (19-20) ended. Just as the bloom of nature cannot long sustain itself before winter arrives. ” The third stanza continues in much the same vein with imagery of natures fading. “Flowers do fade, and wanton fields / To wayward winter reckoning yields. The line about “truth in every shepherd’s tongue” is particularly damning. Where Marlowe sees loves possibilities, Ralegh only sees “cares to come. It is an almost idea for idea refutation of everything Marlowe described in his second stanza. “A honey tongue, a heart of gall, / Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.