Paradoxically, the key to Marvell's “Nymph Complaining for the Death of Her Faun” is the controversy the poem has inspired. Each critical interpretation is both true and false: none can stand alone; each must be combined with all the others, no matter how seemingly antithetical, to form an overall pattern that is “traditional” in the broadest sense of the word. The “Complaint” is not solely for a fawn, nor is it a lament only for the passing of an old world order, pastoral simplicity, Christ, love, or innocence; it is an elegy for all things that must die and an accurate portrait of the mind's attempt to deal with the inevitability of pain and loss.