Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Song III

SONG III.

Pastoral names

Sylvia and Corin are stock names from pastoral poetry—like calling characters 'Shepherd' and 'Shepherdess.' Barbauld is working within a tradition her readers would recognize instantly.

Sylvia.
LEAVE me, simple shepherd, leave me;
Drag no more a hopeless chain:

Hopeless chain

Standard Petrarchan metaphor: unrequited love as bondage. The 'chain' appears in thousands of Renaissance love poems—Barbauld is using the cliché deliberately.

I cannot like, nor would deceive thee;
Love the maid that loves again.
Corin.
Tho' more gentle nymphs surround me,

Kindly pitying

Corin admits other women are interested but frames it as pity, not desire. He's positioning himself as tragic hero rather than rejected suitor.

Kindly pitying what I feel,
Only you have power to wound me;
Sylvia, only you can heal.
Sylvia.

Pastoral names

Sylvia and Corin are stock names from pastoral poetry—like calling characters 'Shepherd' and 'Shepherdess.' Barbauld is working within a tradition her readers would recognize instantly.

Corin, cease this idle teazing;
Love that's forc'd is harsh and sour:
If the lover be displeasing,
To persist disgusts the more.
Corin.
'Tis in vain, in vain to fly me,
Sylvia, I will still pursue;

Twenty thousand times

Hyperbole borrowed from Petrarch and his imitators. The exaggeration is the point—Corin is performing conventional lover's persistence.

Twenty thousand times deny me,
I will kneel and weep anew.
Sylvia.

Pastoral names

Sylvia and Corin are stock names from pastoral poetry—like calling characters 'Shepherd' and 'Shepherdess.' Barbauld is working within a tradition her readers would recognize instantly.

Cupid ne'er shall make me languish,

Born averse to love

Sylvia claims constitutional immunity to Cupid—the Diana defense. Standard rejection strategy in pastoral poetry, usually proven false by the end.

I was born averse to love;
Lovers' sighs, and tears, and anguish,
Mirth and pastime to me prove.
Corin.
Still I vow with patient duty
Thus to meet your proudest scorn;
You for unrelenting beauty,
I for constant love was born.
But the fates had not consented,

But the fates

The narrator's voice breaks in after six stanzas of dialogue. This sudden shift to third-person past tense rewrites everything we just read.

Since they both did fickle prove;
Of her scorn the maid repented,
And the shepherd—of his love.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Twist Ending

The entire poem is a setup for the last stanza's reversal. For six stanzas, Barbauld writes a completely conventional pastoral dialogue: persistent shepherd, cruel shepherdess, exaggerated vows. Then the narrator steps in to reveal "they both did fickle prove"—Sylvia changed her mind and started wanting him, Corin lost interest.

The shock is in "the shepherd—of his love" with its devastating pause. That em-dash does the work: Corin didn't repent of pursuing her, he repented of loving her at all. The poem exposes the performance of courtship—Corin wanted the chase, not the woman.

Barbauld published this in 1773, when she was 30 and unmarried (she'd marry at 31). The poem's cynicism about romantic persistence cuts against the pastoral tradition's usual message that constant devotion wins out. Here, "patient duty" and "constant love" turn out to be poses, not virtues.

Pastoral Conventions as Target

Every element before the final stanza is borrowed: the "simple shepherd" with his "hopeless chain," the cold nymph who finds lovers' "anguish" amusing, the vow to "kneel and weep anew." Barbauld is writing in the mode of Petrarchan pastoral—the kind of poem where shepherds suffer beautifully and cruel ladies eventually soften.

The dialogue structure lets both characters perform their types perfectly. Sylvia's "I was born averse to love" is the classic Diana claim—constitutional coldness, not personal rejection. Corin's "You for unrelenting beauty, / I for constant love was born" frames them as fated opposites, complementary in their extremes.

Then the narrator reveals the script was a lie. The "fates had not consented" because neither character was actually playing their assigned role—both were faking it. The poem becomes a critique of pastoral conventions: the persistence is harassment, the coldness is strategy, and nobody means what they say.