The shepherd in Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and the nymph in "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" by Sir Walter Ralegh, have very differing ideas of love. Though both speakers have taken different paths down the journey of love, they both are very exaggerated. The shepherd uses the beauty of nature to describe his love, while the nymph uses nature's impermanence to describe how their love would eventually die.

In "Shepherd" the shepherd is speaking to a nymph to which he has fallen in love. The shepherd has a very optimistic and innocent view of love. He is offering many wonderful, yet impossible things to convince his love to marry him. The shepherd uses beautiful images of nature to describe his love for the woman; "And we will all the pleasures prove, / That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, / Woods, or steepy mountains yields." In...