With a last couplet like that, it is no wonder that this poem has a certain infamy. The shocking expletive is quite easily interpreted as a misanthropic, or even misogynistic, revulsion with the body. But that is to forget the rest of the poem (easy to do, given the startling couplet). Cassinus's own physical degradation has been jarringly contrasted with the pastoral tropes he employs, and already there is a wide gap between ideals and corporeality.

Both Cassinus and Peter can describe and imagine decaying or sick bodies, as well as deceit and death, but only in a hypothetical way, imbued with the mystery and distance of mythic conceits about nature. For all his knowledge about the world as a young scholar, and despite his facility with the literary trappings of nature, it comes as a terrible shock to Cassinus that Celia has a human body.

We need not be entirely unsympathetic to Cassinus: it is quite possible that love, whether idealized or quite powerfully felt (or both), can make us blind to another's less delicious activities. The discovery of this imperfection, this failing, this humanity, however mundane, can be quite a shock.