O do not run too fast, for I will but bespeak thy grave, and die
– Andrew Marvell in The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn
Is the Nymph addressing the fawn here, saying "I will bear witness to your grave and die along with you"? I feel like there's a few subtleties in this line I'm missing (the "but" in there for eg.), it'd be great to have them explained.
Best Answer
In short, the narrator is saying
This is possibly confusing for a couple of reasons (outside normal poetic license and archaic language). In particular, "to bespeak thy grave" is to "order a grave for you"; that is "purchase your plot and commission your tombstone or monument".
The following stanza makes this a bit clearer:
That is, "I'm going to order a monument to be placed over your grave; it will be a statue of me, weeping, and standing over your body, carved in alabaster, dead at my feet; but neither my image's tears nor your image's whiteness will do justice to the real thing (my sadness or your purity)."