Pastoral poetry - Kenzee

The pastoral tradition refers to a lineage of creative works that idealize rural life and landscapes, while the term “pastoral” refers to the individual poems within the genre. It is a very ancient form of poetry, and can be linked back to 750 and 650 BCE through a Greek oral poet named Hesiod. During the Italian Renaissance, several poets attempted to imitate another famous pastoral poet, Virgil, and some of these newer poets wrote examples of a pastoral lyric, which is a shorter poem describing beautiful rural landscapes. Another subgenre of pastoral poetry is the pastoral elegy, where a poet in the form of a shepherd is mourning the death of a friend, with one of the most famous examples being John Milton’s Lycidas. A typical theme of pastoral poetry is the corruption of city life, and through this theme, political statements are sometimes made. Pastoral poems are mostly simple and the poetic expression uses conventions that have changed very little over centuries.

Pastoral, in the classical sense, died out in the eighteenth century, with the last notable example being Pope's Pastorals of 1709. In more recent usage, the term 'pastoral' has gained an extended definition: poet William Empson has described it as "the process of putting the complex into the simple", and further explained that "in pastoral, you take a limited life and pretend it is the full and normal one", referring to the idolization of country life.

One of the most famous pastoral poems is 'The Passionate Shepherd to His Love' by Christopher Marlowe:

:Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks, 
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks, 
By shallow rivers to whose falls 
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies, 
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold, 
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherds’ swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.