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Personification in The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd

Personification Examples in The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd:

Text of the Poem

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"Time drives..."   (Text of the Poem)

Raleigh uses an active, rather than passive, construction here to emphasize that time itself is responsible for the action. By doing this, Raleigh personifies time by giving it agency and power, attributions normally given to humans. Notice how he continues to use such active phrasing to describe the actions of non-human entities that follow.

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"wanton..."   (Text of the Poem)

The adjective “wanton” also refers to a lusty person. In Marlowe’s poem, the speaker uses nature to make his love claims and convince the woman that she belongs with him. Nature assists in his courtship. In the nymph’s reply, the speaker personifies nature as “wanton,” a word with negative connotations of dangerous wildness, in order to show a different side of the natural world the shepherd paints as idyllic.

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