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The tone of “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” might best be described as enticing and expectant. This poem concerns a shepherd who’s attempting to convince his love interest to stay with him in the countryside. He does so by enticing them with a long list of material goods that will be hers if they stay. The enticement he offers comes as much from the listing of luxury items as it does from the rich texture of his language, which is full of assonance and consonance, as well as metrical variation. Yet even as the speaker attempts unwearyingly to convince his beloved through these enticements, his tone has an underlying quality of impatient expectation. For instance, consider the poem’s meter. Iambic tetrameter has a galloping rhythm that creates a strong sense of forward momentum. Thus, even as the speaker takes the time to tell his beloved about all the wonderful things they’ll enjoy in the country, he also seems to be rushing. If he is, indeed, rushing, it’s because his ultimate goal isn’t simply to have his beloved stay. He wants to have sex with them, and his underlying sense of haste subtly communicates this expectation.

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