4.07.2021

A YEAR IN POEMS 4/7/2021

 

“If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might we move
To live with thee and be thy love.”

W Raleigh, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”

Why are we so blessed to have this poetic conversation when so many of Elizabethan poems are lost? What was the relationship between these two famous figures (Marlowe and Raleigh)? How did Marlowe react to the playful rebuke that Raleigh puts in his Nymph’s mouth, cutting through the seductive flattery to a rather cold dismissal? And how gratifying to for once hear the pastoral woman's point of view.




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