Classic Love Poems
| 
Sir Walter Ralegh or Raleigh (1552-1618) was an English writer, poet, soldier, courtier, and famed explorer of the New World. He was court favorite of Elizabeth I until 1592, when it was discovered that he had secretly married one of her ladies-in-waiting, Elizabeth “Bess” Throckmorton, without permission. Ralegh was imprisoned, and it took several years for him to regain the Queen’s favor. His poetry is written in the relatively straightforward mode known as “plain style.” In 1596, he responded to Christopher Marlowe’s The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (1592) by writing The Nymph’s Reply to The Shepherd. After the Queen’s death, Ralegh was imprisoned by James I for treason. The poem Even Such is Time is said to have been composed on the eve of his execution.
Elizabeth “Bess” Throckmorton,
Sir Walter Ralegh’s wife
Sherborne Castle, Dorset
Built by Sir Walter Ralegh in 1594
“You shall receave, deare wief, my last words in these my last lynes. My love I send you, that you may keepe it when I am dead; and my councell, that you may remember it whenI am noe more . . .”
—Sir Walter Ralegh to his wife, written from Winchester, December 1603, on the eve
of his expected execution
CLICK PHOTO FOR LARGER VIEW
The Silent Lover I
Passions are liken’d best to floods and streams:
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb;
So, when affection yields discourse, it seems
The bottom is but shallow whence they come.
They that are rich in words, in words discover
That they are poor in that which makes a lover.
The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
In response to The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
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.
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.
To His Love When He Had Obtained Her
Now Serena be not coy,
Since we freely may enjoy
Sweet embraces, such delights,
As will shorten tedious nights.
Think that beauty will not stay
With you always, but away,
And that tyrannizing face
That now holds such perfect grace
Will both changed and ruined be;
So frail is all things as we see,
So subject unto conquering Time.
Then gather flowers in their prime,
Let them not fall and perish so;
Nature her bounties did bestow
On us that we might use them, and
‘Tis coldness not to understand
What she and youth and form persuade
With opportunity that’s made
As we could wish it. Let’s, then, meet
Often with amorous lips, and greet
Each other till our wanton kisses
In number pass the day Ulysses
Consumed in travel, and the stars
That look upon our peaceful wars
With envious luster. If this store
Will not suffice, we’ll number o’er
The same again, until we find
No number left to call to mind
And show our plenty. They are poor
That can count all they have and more.
on “Ralegh, Sir Walter”
