Analysis of the poem "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" by Christopher Marlowe

“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” by Christopher Marlowe is one of the most well-known love poems in the English language and one of the earliest examples of the pastoral poetry
in Elizabethan era.
It consists of six four-line stanzas rhymed according to the pattern AABB, which forms two couplets.
It has a strong regular rhythm. It sounds melodious also due to refrain "Come live with me and be my love", which recurs three times.
The speaker of the poem is a shepherd. His speech is addressed to a woman, probably nymph.
The theme of the poem is carpe diem. The shephard hopes that he and his beloved will lead an Edenic, carefree life of free love in nature. The shepherd pledges to do the impossible if only the woman will accept his request. His elaborate promises, however, are hardly feasible to fulfill as he is a poor peasant and he will never afford gems and precious stones he boasts about. Still, he believes that he will manage to seduce the female with his description of the beauty and richness of nature.
To make his offer sound attractive he uses variety of stylistic devices: apostrophe ("Come live with me and be my love"), epithets ("steepy", shallow", "melodious", "fair lined", "the purest"), alliteration ("The shepherds’ swains shall dance and sing", "mind may move") and metaphors
("I will make thee beds of roses", "Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle").
The imagery appeals to senses of sight ("Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks"), hearing ("Melodious birds sing madrigals","swains shall dance and sing"), smell ("fragrant posies") and even touch ("slippers for the cold") and it evokes the atmposphere of country life with its blissfull unawareness and admiration for nature.

Emilia Olszewska