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Pastoral poetry is much like it sounds: poetry that has to do with pastures! And in some pastures, there are sheep tended by shepherds. The pastoral poem elevates the life of the shepherd or shepherdess, versus the evils of the city. Poets as early as Theocritus, Hesiod, and Virgil wrote pastoral poems, as did writers like Shakespeare. It is interesting to note that most poets who wrote pastoral poems were not really from the country. Their point of view was more idealistic than realistic.
The pastoral poem presents an idealistic, almost Utopian, view of rural life. In these poems, shepherds and shepherdesses are innocent, pure, and free from corruption of the city or even the court. Some common topics of these poems were death, love, the mockery of politics, and the ideal life of the country. Shepherds and shepherdesses would sing love songs to each other. Sometimes pastoral poetry is elegiac, mourning the deceased shepherd, for instance.
One famous example of pastoral poetry is Christopher Marlowe's poem, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love. Here are the first three stanzas:
'COME live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.
There will we sit upon the rocks
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
There will I make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle.'
The shepherd woos his love and lets her know the virtues of the pastoral life, such as sitting by shallow rivers, and hearing birds sing. Then he tells her he will make her a bed of roses and give her flowers. The poem continues on for four more stanzas, and the shepherd certainly paints an ideal picture for this young woman. A year later, Sir Walter Raleigh refuted the poem with A Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd. Here are the first four stanzas:
'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.
Time drives the 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, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.'
In a humorous voice of a shepherdess, Sir Walter Raleigh ruefully refutes this ideal of the loving pastoral shepherd. Raleigh points out that life has hardships. People complain. Rivers rage. Flowers fade, and hearts grow bitter. Soon gifts like beds of roses wither and flowers rot. Here, Raleigh portrays a different viewpoint of pastoral life.
However, whether the pastoral life was realistic or not, many such poems existed and here is another example. John Donne used a similar pattern to Christopher Marlowe in writing The Bait. Here are a few stanzas:
'Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.
There will the river whispering run
Warm'd by thy eyes, more than the sun;
And there the enamour'd fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.
When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.'
Here, Donne idealizes a fishing trip with a beautiful woman. He goes as far as to say that the fish will be so struck by her beauty that they will be 'more glad' to catch the woman than her, the fisher!
Pastoral poetry is much like it sounds. It is poetry that has to do with pastures. Again, the idea that country life was innocent, peaceful and carefree did not match up with reality. It would be like someone from the city thinking that living on a farm was like living at a petting zoo, with no real hardship or work to be done. Also, it is somewhat naive to think that someone is pure and good based solely upon his or her environment.
But there is a sweetness to these poems that expresses a longing for some ideal, sinless place, somewhat like Heaven. In reaction to the corruption around them, these poets sought something higher and purer. The problem, of course, is that no such place truly exists on earth.
Theocritus, Hesiod, and Virgil wrote pastoral poems, as did writers like Shakespeare. Some notable examples of pastoral poems include The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe, A Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd by Sir Walter Raleigh, and The Bait by John Donne.
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