Poem: "The Lamb's Plea To Them Both"

[jjhunter]

In 1592, Christopher Marlowe wrote a delightfully insipid poem called 'The Passionate Shepherd to His Love', featuring a horny shepherd attempting to win his love over with various gifts and promises. Four years later, Sir Walter Raleigh penned 'The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd', in which the titular Nymph absolutely skewers the shepherd's every attempt at charm, incidentally subverting the pastoral mode in which both poems are written. Zoom forward some four hundred years, during which several other poets throw in their two cents, and you get another voice--me--taking up the banner of the humble lamb.

Given how important context is for getting all the jokes, I'm including 'The Passionate Shepherd' and 'The Nymph's Reply' in full here under cuts, and 'The Lamb's Plea To Them Both' at the end.

( The Passionate Shepherd to His Love )

( The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd )

The Lamb's Plea To Them Both
If all the world were soft and green
And not a lupine creature seen
If all that then I would approve;
Abandon me for wooing love!

We'd happ'ly stand, my folk and I,
Watching the Nymph and shepherd fly,
With crunch of grass, to which sweet song
The nightingale might sing along.

O Nymph! My shepherd's lost his head;
He mutters oaths, neglects his bed;
And what care I in winter's cold
For woolen dress and buckle gold?

A wise, aged ewe still fair like thee
Will only tease the ram he be;
Return his heart and let it roam
Else I be shorn and locked from home.

O Master, let me eat the belt
And nibble roses for my pelt,
For such a love is not to be;
There's no excuse for leaving me

Enjoy the sun and eat thy grass
And let this fit of passion pass;
If all my pleas thy heart may move,
Then live with me free from such love!


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

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Consciously or not, I think most poetry is in conversation with other poetry. Do you enjoy such conversations, or find them intimidating? How much of an educational barrier is potentially there for one's audience when one draws on greater conversations and cultural references, and how might one lower the barrier without compromising on the richness gained by consciously including those contexts?

Live Poetry Today!

[ysabetwordsmith]

The Crowdfunding Creative Jam is still running over on crowdfunding.  You can leave a prompt requesting poetry (or other types of material) and the theme is "misfits."  A number of items have already been created and posted.

Today I'm also doing a mid-month Poetry Fishbowl, featuring my poetic series Monster House.  Drop by and give me prompts on living in a house where not everyone is human.  At least one poem will be posted free, so you can also check back later to see what appears.