Love's Elysium

Almost the entire action of the poem takes place in an imagined place that Carew refers to as "Love's Elysium" (2). In Greek myth, the Elysian fields were where a very small number of the most virtuous and noble people were allowed to go when they died – essentially, heaven. Carew's heaven is an enormously sensuous one. It is filled with physical beauty, from trees to streams to blossoming flowers. It is also populated by figures from history, myth, and literature, who share openly in this world's delights. What makes this place "Elysium" is not just its magical nature, but also the absence of shame that characterizes it. It is heavenly because it is a place beyond consideration of sin or sexual mores.

The World

The poem's other setting, contrasting with Elysium, is "the world" (166). The poem begins and ends there, in reality, torn away from the fantasy of...