Like most people who succeed in life, Sir Walter Raleigh had his fair share of both lovers and haters. As it turns out, both got him into a serious amount of trouble. He was imprisoned in 1592 for secretly marrying one of Queen Elizabeth's ladies in waiting, and eventually executed on trumped-up charges for treason. Some people resented his unprecedented rise to wealth and popularity at court, while others admired him for his many talents as a soldier, courtier, philosopher, explorer, scientist, historian, and poet.
Either way you slice it, Raleigh had a totally fascinating life and brought a lot to the table. Literally. Raleigh is responsible for naming the great state of Virginia, bringing tobacco to Europe, the potato to Ireland, and Edmund Spenser to England. Talk about a contribution to society.
Given the super-impressive magnitude of things he accomplished, Sir Walter Raleigh's poetry is generally seen as one of his lesser contributions to the world at large. But the fact that Raleigh isn't known for his poetry in the same way that Shakespeare and John Donne are, doesn't mean that his poetry isn't worth reading. In fact, it's quite good and, in some ways, we have "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" to thank for introducing it to us in the first place.