Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major.

Landscape

References to landscape abound in “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.” Particularly in the poem’s first two stanzas, the speaker describes the countryside where he’d like his beloved to join him. The landscape where the speaker spends his days can satisfy any pleasure a person might desire. Hence, in lines 1–4, he asks his beloved to come “prove” (that is, experience) the plenitude of pleasures:

     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.

In addition to its variety of topographical features, the speaker’s country landscape also has the highly idealized quality that’s traditional in pastoral poetry. For one thing, the speaker presents the landscape as a space of leisure, where the only work to be done is to “sit upon the Rocks” and watch “the shepherds feed their flocks, / By shallow Rivers” (lines 5 and 6–7). For another thing, the speaker makes it sound like the whole landscape, and all the creatures in it, are there to serve the shepherds and their beloveds. Hence his claim that “melodious birds sing Madrigals” (line 8) for the sole purpose of charming the reclined humans. Taken in total, the references to landscape in the poem paint the picture of a perfect pastoral countryside.

Material Goods

In the poem’s middle stanzas, the speaker lists several material goods he promises to provide his beloved should they choose to stay with him in the country. These goods include fresh flowers, fine lambswool, and gold-buckled slippers, as well as a fiber belt decked with ivy, coral, and amber (lines 17 and 18). The various goods the speaker describes are all luxury products that come directly from the land or the nearby seaside. Though they would be expensive to purchase in the city, here they stand as signs of the natural wealth of country living. Furthermore, their apparent abundance demonstrates the effortless fertility of the pastoral landscape. In this sense, the sheer fruitfulness of the landscape has an erotic charge that speaks to the passionate shepherd’s underlying sexual desire. Ultimately, the speaker’s goal in mentioning a range of luxury material goods is to entice his beloved to stay with him. Not only will they enjoy the natural wealth of the countryside, but they will also enjoy the speaker’s love—or so he hopes.