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Pastoral Poetry
 “Pastoral” (from pastor, Latin for “shepherd”)
refers to a literary work dealing with
shepherds and rustic life.
 Pastoral poetry is highly conventionalized; it
presents an idealized rather than realistic
view of rustic life.
Common Topics
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Love and seduction
The value of poetry
Death and mourning
The corruption of the city or court vs the “purity” of
idealized country life
 Politics (shepherds critique society or easily
identifiable political figures)
 Eclogues (a dialogue between two shepherds)
Pastoral Elegy
 Expresses the poet’s grief at the loss of a
friend or important person
 Praise for the dead shepherd
 Effects of death upon nature
 The poet’s acceptance of the inevitability of
death and the hope for immortality
Famous Pastoral Poetry
 Christopher Marlowe’s “A Passionate
Shepherd to His Love”
 Sir Walter Raleigh’s “The Nymph’s Reply to
the Shepherd”
The Passionate Shepherd to His
Love
 Carpe diem and immediate gratification of their
sexual passions
 Love in the countryside will be like a return to the
Garden of Eden
 There is a tradition that our problems are caused
by having too many restrictions by society
 If we get away from these rules, we can return to
the pristine condition of happiness
 If the nymph would go a maying with the
shepherd, they would have the perfect life!
 In quatrains
 Iambic tetrameter
 The shepherd invites his love to experience
the joys of nature
 He hopes to return with the nymph to an
Edenic life of free love in nature
The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
 Raleigh argues that because time flies, we
should not seize the day
 There could be consequences to their roll in
the grass
 Time does not stand still; winter inevitably
follows spring; therefore,we cannot act on
impulses until we have examined the
consequences
The nymph reverses his images
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Rocks grow cold
Fields yield to the harvest
The flocks re driven to fold in winter
Rivers rage
Birds complain
Free love is impossible
The seasons pass as does time
Nymphs grow old, and shepherds grow cold