HOW DOES THE POEM NYMPH COMPLAINING AT THE DEATH OF HER FAWN FIT THE STRUCTURAL DEFINITON OF THE LYRIC POEM?

The speaker of the poem is a nymph, who narrates the death of her fawn in the style of a lyric pastoral. Over the years, critics have interpreted Marvell’s poem in many different ways. Some see it as a light-hearted fantasy, others consider it a psychological tale of lost love, and a few even imagine it to be a complex political allegory. The nymph’s speech is fairly simplistic and childlike, which contrasts sharply with the poem’s serious subjects of betrayal, violence, and death. However, such extreme variance between form and content is consistent with Marvell’s poetic technique at large, which aims to expose contradictions and paradoxes that, in turn, produce memorable aesthetic effects. The poem consists of 122 lines of rhymed couplets in iambic tetrameter. From the beginning of the poem, the nymph emphasizes her deep psychological connection with the fawn. The language and imagery is pastoral and lyrical in nature.