Bad lines: The fancy cannot cheat so well As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Here's the context: Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! The fancy cannot cheat so well As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. • Or, from the same poem: Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— To thy high requiem become a sod. Here's the context: Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy. Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— To thy high requiem become a sod.

But see, I still think you're resisting the spirit of the thing! You're wanting sex to be The Thing, primary. If he falls on the grass, it's really sex. But Marvell's whole deal is about turning that worldview upside down. Sex is off yonder and it's no damn good. Right here where it's green you get all the sensual delight (and even play!) you could possibly ask for. Part of his point is that not all amorous delight has to come out as sex. For sure you know Žižek's joke about how somebody was telling him that if he (Žižek) didn't want to share his Chinese food at a restaurant, that was because he didn't want to share his lover's body with other people. Žižek wanted to know why it cdn't be understood the other way on: He doesn't wanna share the lover's body because he doesn't wanna share the Chinese food. Same kinda reversal going on in Marvell. *You would think* the garden is just a consolation prize, but it is The Thing. Sex is the pale substitute. (Wait, is this one of those deals where we're both saying the same thing, and I'm just being dense?)

Hmm. I feel like it's misleading to say Marvell wants to fuck the stuff! I mean, *kinda*. But isn't it more like he's saying the peach and the melons and the grass are actually *better* than sex? His whole drift is "What do we need sex for when we have nature?" How paltry kisses are, compared to that peach, etc. Pan and Apollo, too. They don't wanna screw. They want reeds and leaves. ’Cuz reeds and leaves are nice! They trip you up? No matter, they catch you softly. No rape here. Rape is what happens over there in Ickyland where you have to deal with real women. Anyway, such is my reading of this upside-down poem.