The Full Text of “Raleigh Was Right”
The Full Text of “Raleigh Was Right”
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“Raleigh Was Right” Introduction
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"Raleigh Was Right" is a free verse poem by William Carlos Williams, first published in 1940. It responds to Sir Walter Raleigh's 400-year-old poem "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd," which itself is a response to (and essentially a parody of) Christopher Marlowe's poem "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love." In Marlowe's original poem, a shepherd tries to convince a young woman to be with him by painting an idyllic picture of their potential life together in the countryside. In Raleigh's response, that young woman (here presented as a nymph) refuses the shepherd's request, explaining that all the natural pleasures he promises her would fade with time. The speaker of Williams's poem agrees with Raleigh's nymph, insisting that "the country" can't offer relief from the troubles of the modern world—and also adds that there's no use in holding onto such a romanticized, likely fictional vision of rural life.
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“Raleigh Was Right” Summary
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We can't escape to the countryside, because it’s not going to offer us any comfort. What could we possibly learn from tiny, fuzzy-stemmed flowers, which are surrounded by tall grass and tapered, swordlike leaves?
You compliment and celebrate the natural world, recalling those pastoral poets who sung its praises in verse, but that was a long time ago—quite a long time indeed! A time when those who lived in the countryside worked the land, their minds inspired and free and their pockets unburdened by cash—if this ever really was the case.
It certainly isn't like that today. Nowadays, love is like a blossom whose roots can't expect any care or nourishment from their environment. Now, having no money just brings a lack of inspiration and freedom. Fix these conditions if you're able to, but don't believe that we can make a home for ourselves countryside, because it's not going to offer us any comfort.
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“Raleigh Was Right” Themes
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Nature vs. Modern Life
"Raleigh was Right" is a response to a Renaissance-era spar, in verse, between poets Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh. In Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," a shepherd tries to convince a woman to live with him in the countryside, where, he promises, their life will be filled with natural beauty and pleasure. In Raleigh's response, the shepherd's beloved points out that those same pleasures will decay in time and thus refuses to follow him into the forest. Williams's speaker agrees with this decision, but not (just) because all good things come to an end. Instead, the speaker of Williams's poem argues that the small comforts of nature can do little to soothe the ills of modern life. What's more, this poem implies, there's no use clinging to the romanticized pastoral existence praised by those older poets—a way of life that is long gone, and, in fact, may never have existed at all.
Apparently propositioned by a figure similar to Marlowe's shepherd, the speaker of Williams's poem confidently asserts that running off to the country won't grant them any "peace." The speaker adds that nature can't offer much insight at all, asking, "What can the small violets / tell us"—a phrase that presents natural beauty as fragile and insignificant in the face of modern problems.
The speaker then points out how the seductive vision of rural life as inherently peaceful recalls the work of pastoral poets from hundreds of years ago. Those writers romanticized the countryside as a place where people happily tended to their fields and flocks, their minds at ease and their "pockets" unburdened by the demands of a modern economy.
But such harmony, the speaker emphasizes, isn't relevant anymore; it existed "long ago"—and may never have existed at all. Indeed, the speaker wonders whether nature ever offered the kind of idealized life depicted in pastoral poems, or if the idea of finding comfort and peace in the countryside was always nothing more than a fantasy.
In any case, such a lifestyle certainly isn't attainable "now." Today, the speaker says, "empty pockets" are not something to be romanticized, as they "make empty heads." The speaker suggests that a lack of income leaves rural populations without an education or the opportunity to experience the world. The implication is that pastoral work has become a burdensome necessity rather than rewarding and inspiring.
The speaker thus expands on the argument that Raleigh's nymph lays out: this speaker will not agree to live in the country, not only because time decays all pleasures, but also because the pleasures of the natural landscape are no balm for modern troubles in the first place. The pleasant provincial life is no longer on the table—if it ever really was.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-23
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Raleigh Was Right”
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Lines 1-3
We cannot go ...
... no peaceBefore the poem even begins, its title offers readers some important context. "Raleigh" here alludes to the English Renaissance poet Walter Raleigh and his 1600 poem "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd," which essentially argues that all of nature's pleasures decay in time. This poem is itself a parody of Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," published in 1599:
- The speaker of Marlowe's poem is a shepherd imploring his beloved to come and live with him in the countryside, promising all kinds of pleasures that they might craft from the landscape—"beds of Roses," "A gown made of the finest wool" that they would harvest themselves, and so on.
- "The Nymph's Reply" imagines that the beloved turns the shepherd down, explaining that neither their love nor the natural world will remain in the young, perfect state that the shepherd describes.
- This poem, then, is saying that Raleigh's nymph made the right choice not to follow the shepherd.
When Williams's actual poem begins, it seems that its speaker has just been met with a proposition similar to the shepherd's: someone, perhaps a lover, has asked the speaker to "go to the country," presumably as a kind of respite from the chaos of urban life. The speaker quickly shuts down the idea, insisting that doing so "will bring [them] no peace." In other words, a rural life won't offer them the tranquility and happiness they seek. It offers no escape.
The speaker seems to directly respond to the beloved who came up with this misguided plan, using "us" and "we" phrases. The resulting apostrophe gives the impression that the audience is involved in the poem's events. The speaker also uses plain, straightforward language that adds to the authoritative feel of these opening lines.
When formatting this poem for publication, Williams chose narrow margins that required "no peace" to spill over onto its own line, highlighting the phrase. This structure creates anticipation as the audience must read on to learn what life in the country might "bring us," thus making the revelation that it offers "no peace" all the more dramatic and memorable.
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Lines 4-6
What can the ...
... leaves? -
Lines 7-11
Though you praise ...
... long ago! -
Lines 11-15
when country people ...
... this were true. -
Lines 16-18
Not now. Love ...
... make empty heads. -
Lines 19-23
Cure it if ...
... no peace.
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“Raleigh Was Right” Symbols
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Flowers
Flowers appear throughout the poem and symbolize the beauty and pleasures of the natural world.
The speaker first mentions flowers in the opening stanza, basically deeming "small violets" useless against modern woes. The speaker asks what these flowers can "tell us," as if they have little useful knowledge to offer. Nature's pleasures, these lines imply, are insignificant.
The speaker then pictures "country people" working the land in the distant past, producing inspired or "flowering" minds. Here, the speaker suggests that a close relationship with nature was once fruitful—that the pleasures of nature helped those farmers' minds grow and blossom. Of course, the speaker quickly clarifies that this lifestyle only existed "long ago"—and may never have existed at all. Now, the speaker argues, the flowers that represent such pure pleasures as "love" are sure to die.
The flowers in the poem thus speak to the state of the world, ultimately suggesting that its pure beauty and pleasures are insignificant and dying off.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 4-5: “the small violets tell us / that grow on furry stems”
- Line 13: “flowering minds”
- Lines 16-17: “Love itself a flower / with roots in a parched ground.”
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“Raleigh Was Right” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
"Raleigh Was Right" contains several allusions, especially to poems in the pastoral tradition. Pastoral poetry typically presents an idealized vision of life in the countryside, praising the imagined simplicity and virtue of rural labor. The poem's frequent allusions to this tradition allow the speaker to explore its limitations and poke holes in its relevance to modern life.
In fact, before the poem even begins, its title alludes to Walter Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd":
- Raleigh's poem, published in 1600, parodies a work by fellow English Renaissance poet Christopher Marlowe, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love."
- Marlowe's original poem perpetuates pastoral ideals, as its speaker implores his beloved to live with him in the countryside, describing the many tantalizing pleasures they might glean from the natural world.
- However, Raleigh's "Nymph's Reply" imagines that the beloved turns the shepherd down, shattering the illusion of a perfect life in the countryside by explaining how each of the pleasures the shepherd offers will decay and bring hardship with time.
There are other possible allusions as well. In the poem's opening stanza, for example, the speaker describes "small violets," questioning the insight they have to offer. Both Marlowe's poem and Raleigh's reply describe several varieties of flowers, but neither actually mentions violets. As a result, the "small violets" have been interpreted as an allusion to various poems, most convincingly John Milton's "L'Allegro" and T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land":
- The speaker of "L'Allegro" describes the conception of Mirth (a spirit representing amusement/laughter) "on beds of violets blue." The poem generally describes a life of pure pleasure and reckless abandon in the countryside, parroting Marlowe's perspective and ultimately revealing just how extreme it is.
- Eliot's "Waste Land" refers to twilight as "the violet hour," which is described as mechanically driving people away from work and towards home with its captivating beauty. "The Waste Land" generally explores the decay and alienation that pervades the modern world.
- By possibly invoking these poems, the "small violets" become an image of nature's delights—albeit one whose pleasures might not stand up to the harsh realities of the surrounding world.
Finally, the speaker and the beloved’s discussion of nature reminds the violets of "the poets / who sung of our loveliness"—an explicit allusion to poets writing in the pastoral tradition, which stretches back to ancient Greece. The societies such poets describe existed "long ago! / long ago!" In other words, the idyllic life in the countryside their poetry praises is long gone.
Where allusion appears in the poem:- Lines 1-3: “We cannot go to the country / for the country will bring us / no peace”
- Line 4: “violets”
- Lines 8-15: “and call to mind the poets / who sung of our loveliness / it was long ago! / long ago! when country people / would plow and sow with / flowering minds and pockets / at ease— / if ever this were true.”
- Lines 22-23: “for the country will bring us / no peace.”
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Apostrophe
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Alliteration
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Consonance
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End-Stopped Line
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Enjambment
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Metaphor
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Repetition
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Rhetorical Question
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"Raleigh Was Right" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Lance shaped
- The poets who sung of our loveliness
- Plow
- Sow
- Flowering
- Parched
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(Location in poem: Line 6: “the long grass among lance shaped”)
Long and tapered. Literally, resembling a lance, a simple weapon similar to a spear or sword that is typically thrown or jabbed at an enemy.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Raleigh Was Right”
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Form
"Raleigh Was Right" consists of three narrow stanzas of varying lengths. It's written in free verse, meaning that those stanzas don't have any regular meter or rhyme scheme.
The poem's form is thus a far cry from that of the two poems to which it responds: both "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" consist of steady quatrains (four-line stanzas) with regular patterns of meter and rhyme. Williams's shift away from the rigid form of those older poems reflects the idea that old poetic tropes (especially the idealization of nature) are outdated and useless in the modern world.
Note that the exact line breaks in "Raleigh Was Right" were slightly modified from one publication to the next. That said, this poem (and many of Williams's others) was formatted to look like a narrow column of text on the page, with longer lines spilling over into the next and requiring indentation. Here, "no peace," "leaves," "at ease," and again "no peace" look like they fall on their own lines simply due to this narrow formatting. This is intentional, however, and calls attention to these phrases and subtly links them. It also highlights their shared long /ee/ sound, which produces slant rhymes.
More generally, the narrow structure creates a disjointed reading experience. The lines are broken up irregularly in order to fit into this one long column, with frequent enjambment cutting the speaker off in a middle of a phrase and creating a sense of anticipation and disorientation. The fragmented reading experience might reflect the chaos and confusion of the modern world (in contrast to the romanticized, free-flowing beauty of the idealized past).
Finally, like Raleigh's "Nymph's Reply," this poem can be interpreted as a parody of the pastoral genre of poetry, as the speaker introduces and then undermines common pastoral images and themes. In particular, the speaker riffs on the idea that rural laborers have a perfect, inspiring lifestyle due to their close contact with nature.
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Meter
"Raleigh Was Right" is a free verse poem and doesn't have a regular meter. In general, this makes the poem sound casual and conversational. It also veers away from the meter of the poems to which it responds, both of which follow a steady iambic (da-DUM) rhythm. Given that the speaker argues that the world of those other poems is long gone, it makes sense that Williams's poem avoids the rigid poetic structures of the past.
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Rhyme Scheme
As a free verse poem, "Raleigh Was Right" doesn't follow any particular rhyme scheme. As with its lack of meter, this keeps things sounding loose and unpredictable. It's also another deviation from the two poems to which "Raleigh Was Right" responds: both "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" feature steady rhyme schemes. That this poem does not might be another subtle nod to the idea that the world of those poems is long gone.
However, there is one subtle chain of slant rhymes that appears throughout Williams's poem: between "peace," "leaves," "ease," and again "peace." These all fall at the end of the poem's longest lines, calling more attention to these words and perhaps reminding the reader of all the comforts of pastoral life that no longer exist.
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“Raleigh Was Right” Speaker
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The speaker of "Raleigh Was Right" seems to be responding to a request—perhaps from a lover—to "go to the country" and live a more peaceful, harmonious life. The speaker rejects this proposal, arguing that life in the countryside won't solve their problems.
From this speaker's point of view, the pastoral ideal celebrated by poets of the past doesn't exist anymore (and might never have existed at all). According to the speaker, a life of rural labor brings great challenges today, and idealizing such a lifestyle is thus misguided. As such, the speaker comes across as a realist—and a bleak and jaded one at that.
The speaker might be interpreted as a modern version of the nature spirit who narrates Walter Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd." But in Williams's poem, the identities of the speaker and the speaker's partner ultimately remain ambiguous. This allows the poem's message to be more universal; life in the country, the poem implies, is no answer to modern troubles in general.
The poem's second stanza, meanwhile, is told from the perspective of the violets; the speaker imagines what they might "tell us" if they were able to. The speaker's ability to empathize with the violets, and the impulse to give nature a voice in the poem, might suggest a deep admiration for nature, even as the speaker acknowledges that it can't "cure" modern ills.
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“Raleigh Was Right” Setting
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The poem was first published in 1940, and while there are no specific references to any particular time period, the speaker repeatedly contrasts the world "today" with a distant, idealized past. As such, the setting can be taken as the modern world. And given that the speaker rejects the possibility of going "to the country," the poem presumably takes place in a city.
Within the speaker's imagination, the poem toggles between the rough landscapes of this modern world and the idealized rural pastures of a lost (and possibly fantastical) past. While the poem never explicitly describes what the modern city the speaker lives in is like, the beloved's desire to escape this city implies that it's an undesirable home. The description of old rural communities as virtuous societies where people lived in harmony with the land implies that modern cities are the opposite: complex, chaotic, and amoral.
Yet the speaker insists that the modern countryside offers no more "peace" than does this city. While at one point in time the country may have been a lovely place to live, it's not anymore (and, in all likelihood, was never as wonderful as "the poets / who sung of [its] loveliness" made it seem).
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Literary and Historical Context of “Raleigh Was Right”
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Literary Context
"Raleigh Was Right" was first published in Poetry magazine in 1940. However, William Carlos Williams modified the poem later and several versions have appeared in print. The original poem features slightly different line breaks, as Williams often toyed with his poems' structure at this point in his career. The version of "Raleigh Was Right" referenced in this guide first appeared in Williams's 1944 collection The Wedge.
Williams was a leading figure of a literary movement known as Modernism, which aimed to subvert conventional poetic techniques and to establish new poetic traditions to suit the concerns of the modern world. Modernist literature often features allusions, fragmented structures, and multiple perspectives, all of which can be found in this poem.
"Raleigh Was Right" also has some very specific literary context: it responds to Walter Raleigh's "The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd," which itself responds to Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love." Marlowe's poem, published in 1599, features a shepherd trying to convince a young woman to live with him in the countryside. The poem is typical of the pastoral genre in its romantic, idealized depiction of rural life.
Raleigh's poem, published a year later, sees the young woman rejecting the shepherd's request, arguing that his promises are hollow because time decays all pleasures. The famous parody has inspired a number of responses, and Williams, of course, agrees with Raleigh!
Historical Context
"Raleigh Was Right" was collected into a manuscript as early as 1937, and it was likely written earlier that decade. The 1930s was a period of global upheaval that included a worldwide economic downturn and rising international tensions leading up to the outbreak of World War II in 1939. In fact, Williams said that he put together The Wedge (1944), which contains the version of the poem displayed here, after fielding numerous requests from soldiers who wanted to carry a pocket-sized edition of his works as they fought in the Second World War.
In 1930s America, where this poem was written, an agricultural disaster known as the Dust Bowl was also ravaging the Great Plains region. Federal land policies had incentivized inexperienced farmers to settle out west in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Over-cultivation and severe drought caused devastating dust storms that destroyed millions of acres of farmland throughout the '30s, injuring and killing many rural workers in the process.
The extreme physical, economic, and psychic strain that these communities faced conflicted with the Manifest Destiny they had been instilled with—a belief that God destined the expansion of the United States across North America. The noble, prosperous lifestyle of the rural settlers turned out to be an illusion, and such uncomplicated representations of living off the land felt increasingly far-fetched (especially as the whole country looked on with horror).
The pastoral poetic tradition that the poem references stretches back to the praises by ancient Greek poets of the Arcadians, an ancient tribe in the central mountainous highlands of the Peloponnese (a peninsula that is part of Greece). The tribe was believed to have been indigenous to the region, which is remote and high in the mountains, preserving its language and culture for many generations. The first pastoral poets praised the Arcadian way of life, extolling the virtues of the shepherds' simple, harmonious lives in nature.
In the Renaissance era (when "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" were written), Arcadia was often invoked as the epitome of a perfect, untainted wilderness—offering imaginary respite from the modern world. It's safe to say that such idealizing accounts of the Arcadian people are probably not historically accurate—and judging by this poem, Williams would likely agree.
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More “Raleigh Was Right” Resources
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External Resources
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Biography of the Poet — Browse an overview of Williams's life and poetic career from the Poetry Foundation.
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Marlowe's Many Replies and Parodies — Explore other responses to Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," one of the most frequently parodied poems in English.
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The Original Publication — Browse the May 1940 edition of Poetry magazine, which included the original publication of this poem. Note the particularly narrow margins of Williams's contribution as well as the slightly modified line breaks.
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The Poem Out Loud — Listen to the author read "Raleigh Was Right" at the Library of Congress in 1945.
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Pastoral Poetry: Arcadia Through the Ages — Learn more about the pastoral tradition with this deep dive from the Classical Society of Poets.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by William Carlos Williams
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