The poem begins with a request from the speaker, "come live with me, and be my love," pretty

please
with a cherry on top, and goes on to list a series of promises from the speaker to the object of his
affections about all the fun activities they'll do together if the offer is accepted.

They'll explore valleys, groves, hills and fields, they'll sit on rocks and watch the shepherds, and they'll
listen to birds sing to the tune of waterfalls. But that's not all. Fancy duds from the city won't do for all
that time in the great outdoors, so the speaker promises to make some clothes and accessories better
suited for the occasion: caps of flowers, straw belts, lambs' wool gowns, beds of roses, you get the
picture. And we're still not done. The speaker's final promises, gold buckles, coral clasps, amber studs,
and dancing shepherds, are loftier still.

As the promises continue to drift outside the realm of what the speaker can actually guarantee, the
speaker makes a crucial change of gears. The poem opened with a general request—come live with me
and be my love—but it closes with a conditional one. The speaker now only wants the love to come if
she is "move[d]" by the delights and pleasures that were listed in the poem, delights that it seems
increasingly unlikely the speaker will be able to provide (we mean, who has a troupe of dancing
shepherds on retainer?). The poem ends with a cliffhanger, as we never get to hear the love's reply.

Setting

.......Chistopher Marlowe sets the poem in early spring in a rural locale (presumably in England) where
shepherds tend their flocks. The use of the word madrigals (line 8)—referring to poems set to music and
sung by two to six voices with a single melody or interweaving melodies—suggests that the time is the
sixteenth century, when madrigals were highly popular in England and elsewhere in Europe. However,
the poem could be about any shepherd of any age in any country, for such is the universality of its
theme.

The Passionate Shepherd: He importunes a woman—presumably a young and pretty country girl—to
become his sweetheart and enjoy with him all the pleasures that nature has to offer.

The Shepherd’s Love: The young woman who receives the Passionate Shepherd’s message.

Swains: Young country fellows whom the Passionate Shepherd promises will dance for his beloved.

"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" by Sir Walter Raleigh was written as a response to Christopher
Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love." Both were witty love poems. They were not intended,
as the later works of the Romantic era, or even many of Shakespeare's sonnets, to express deep
personal emotions, but rather to display the cleverness and charm of the poet in portraying flirtation.
Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" is an example of the "carpe diem" poem,
one which urges a reader or interlocutor to indulge in immediate sensual pleasures and take risks
because of the fleeting nature of human life and the uncertainty for the future.

In "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd," the speaker takes a more pragmatic point of view, she
suggests that although humans are mortal, youth and impulsiveness are fleeting, and one must plan
one's life in light of the fact that carefree youth passes and one needs to plan for middle and old age. In
practical terms, as the shepherd is not, apparently, proposing marriage, the trifles he offers will not
compensate the nymph for the risks she would run in letting herself be seduced by the shepherd.
Raleigh does not need to state explicitly for an audience that the woman who becomes pregnant
outside marriage in his period loses the possibility of getting married, loses her place in society, and
becomes an indigent outcast. Thus the nymph resists the shepherd's blandishments because she knows
that the pleasures of youth are fleeting and the baubles she is offered worthless compared to the risks
she would be taking in yielding to the shepherd.

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

Summary: Sonnet 130

This sonnet compares the speaker’s lover to a number of other beauties—and never in the lover’s favor.
Her eyes are “nothing like the sun,” her lips are less red than coral; compared to white snow, her breasts
are dun-colored, and her hairs are like black wires on her head. In the second quatrain, the speaker says
he has seen roses separated by color (“damasked”) into red and white, but he sees no such roses in his
mistress’s cheeks; and he says the breath that “reeks” from his mistress is less delightful than perfume.
In the third quatrain, he admits that, though he loves her voice, music “hath a far more pleasing sound,”
and that, though he has never seen a goddess, his mistress—unlike goddesses—walks on the ground. In
the couplet, however, the speaker declares that, “by heav’n,” he thinks his love as rare and valuable “As
any she belied with false compare”—that is, any love in which false comparisons were invoked to
describe the loved one’s beauty.