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The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd
- Sir Walter Ralegh (1554?-1618)
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.
But Time drives 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.
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, they 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.
kirtle - a woman's loose gown worn in the Middle Ages.
Philomel - literary term for nightingale
This poem is in answer to Christopher Marlowe's The Passionate
Shepherd to His Love. William Carlos Williams' Raleigh
Was Right was written about this poem.
It can be found for example in:
Harmon, William, ed. The Classic Hundred Poems (Second Edition).
New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
Williams, Oscar, ed. Immortal Poems of the English Language
New York: Pocket Books, 1952.
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