Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” Author: Gabriela Abraham Estevez Even though pastoral poetry has come to mean any poetry that deals with the simplicity of life past life in contrast to the terrible present. Also known as "the idyll," "the eclogue," and "bucolic poetry," the pastoral is a poem which idealises the peaceful and simple lifestyle of shepherds or people of the countryside who live close to nature. The form was originated by Theocritus in the third century B.C. Classical poets often speak of the pastoral life in terms of a Golden Age (as in Hesiod and Ovid), in which humans lived