Learn English – the meaning of this line of Andrew Marvell’s poem

meaningmeaning-in-context

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

You (the little deer) have just died and gone to paradise. I know you are playing there and ready to run off to your eternal enjoyment -- but hold on a moment -- don't run too far ahead of me: just let me order your grave to honor you, then I'll die as well and join you in the afterlife.

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:

First my unhappy statue shall

Be cut in marble, and withal

Let it be weeping too; but there

Th’ engraver sure his art may spare,

For I so truly thee bemoan

That I shall weep though I be stone;

Until my tears, still dropping, wear

My breast, themselves engraving there.

There at my feet shalt thou be laid,

Of purest alabaster made;

For I would have thine image be

White as I can, though not as thee.

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)."

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