Page 43 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

British Poetry

Notes 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.

“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” exhibits the concept of Gifford’s second definition of pastoral.
The speaker of the poem, who is the titled shepherd, draws on the idealization of urban material
pleasures to win over his love rather than resorting to the simplified pleasures of pastoral ideology.
This can be seen in the listed items: “lined slippers,” “purest gold,” “silver dishes,” and “ivory
table” (lines 13, 15, 16, 21, 23). The speaker takes on a voyeuristic point of view with his love, and
they are not directly interacting with the other true shepherds and nature.
Pastoral shepherds and maidens usually have Greek names like Corydon or Philomela, reflecting
the origin of the pastoral genre. Pastoral poems are set in beautiful rural landscapes, the literary
term for which is “locus amoenus” (Latin for “beautiful place”), such as Arcadia, a rural region of
Greece, mythological home of the god Pan, which was portrayed as a sort of Eden by the poets. The
tasks of their employment with sheep and other rustic chores is held in the fantasy to be almost
wholly undemanding and is left in the background, abandoning the shepherdesses and their swains
in a state of almost perfect leisure. This makes them available for embodying perpetual erotic
fantasies. The shepherds spend their time chasing pretty girls—or, at least in the Greek and Roman
versions, pretty lads as well. The eroticism of Virgil’s second eclogue, Formosum pastor Corydon
ardebat Alexin (“The shepherd Corydon burned with passion for pretty Alexis”) is entirely
homosexual, although the use of that term is anachronistic due to a lack of any idea of sexual identity
in the times in which Virgil was writing.

4.4.1 Pastoral Poetry
Pastoral literature continued after Hesiod with the poetry of the Hellenistic Greek Theocritus, several
of whose Idylls are set in the countryside and involve dialogues between herdsmen. Theocritus may
have drawn on authentic folk traditions of Sicilian shepherds. He wrote in the Doric dialect but the
metre he chose was the dactylic hexameter associated with the most prestigious form of Greek poetry,
epic. This blend of simplicity and sophistication would play a major part in later pastoral verse.
Theocritus was imitated by the Greek poets Bion and Moschus.

How do you write a pastoral poetry?

4.4.2 Pastoral Epic

Milton is perhaps best known for his epic “Paradise Lost”, one of the few Pastoral epics ever written.
A notable part of Paradise Lost is book IV where he chronicles Satan’s trespass into paradise. Milton’s
iconic descriptions of the garden are shadowed by the fact that we see it from Satan’s perspective and
are thus led to commiserate with him. Milton elegantly works through a presentation of Adam and
Eve’s pastorally idyllic, eternally fertile living conditions and focuses upon their stewardship of the
garden. He gives much focus to the fruit bearing trees and Adam and Eve’s care of them, sculpting an

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