1. 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.

2. Common Topics 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)

3. 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

4. Famous Pastoral Poetry
Christopher Marlowe’s “A Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
Sir Walter Raleigh’s “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”

5. 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!

6. 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

7. 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

8. The nymph reverses his images
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