ANDREW MARVELL, ON POSITIVE EMOTIONS

 À LA SHMOOP

... the cramp of hope does tear:

• First off we've got hope, compared to a cramp, ... Notice how the metaphor fits the feeling: hope nestles inside you like a cramping muscle ...

The pestilence of love does heat:

• In the same way, it makes sense that love is a pestilence, some kind of aggressively infectious disease like the black plague. Anyone who's ever had a Bella-on-Edward-style crush will know that love is definitely a full-body condition, delivering heat and plenty of it.

Joy's cheerful madness does perplex:

• Joy's actually not so bad, although the mental giddiness it produces can be confusing and distracting. That's why happy people tend to be goggle-eyed ditzes. (No offense, all you smilies out there.)

The poem spins a tangled web of metaphor, making the pains of emotion and memory vivid and understandable by comparing them to bodily diseases.

• Line 33: Hope is compared to a cramp, a small nagging pain that grows the more you move that muscle.
• Line 35: The poem describes love as a pestilence, which means an aggressively infectious disease. Marvell was probably thinking of the black plague—because nothing says love like swelling pus-filled buboes—but the metaphor holds for all diseases. Love makes you hot and cold, flushed and dizzy. (And this "love" is obviously eros, erotic love: that for a parent for their child or a pet owner for their pet should BY NO MEANS be a heating pestilence!)
• And joy in like 37 (note that all the positive emotions are in the odd-numbered lines!) is described as a "cheerful madness" or mania, the mental giddiness it produces can be confusing and distracting. 
• The problem is, there's no cure for feelings like futile hope and despairing love. You can't Advil that stuff up and expect to zonk out in blissful non-awareness in thirty minutes. You have to find other solutions, like a new love interest or a new career. -- MISS DERMARK ADDS: But for Pete's sake, no addictions, whether drugs (that includes legal drugs like alcohol and caffeine), gambling, or shopping, or pyromania... I've been through a dark time with addictions myself and I know what it's like!

According to Shmoop: Emotional pain is easier to endure than physical pain because it can't result in death. No matter if it's "the cramp of hope" that tears, "the pestilence of love (eros)" that heats and chills, or "joy's cheerful madness" that perplexes or causes mental giddiness, positive emotions, even seen through Baroque poets by Marvell, are not as lethal as war, abuse, genocide, let alone poisons, torture, or some physical diseases (though some of them, like syphilis and strychnine poisoning, would make death seem like a welcome respite)!

But Marvell also has a naughty side: In To his Coy Mistress (read: To his Shy Girlfriend), he paints a picture of the titular ladylove dead and decaying, her hymen being eaten by maggots (ewww!!), and even uses the C-word of his day and age:

Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace. 

"Quaint" in the seventeenth century meant not only "whimsical," but also "C. U. Next. Tuesday." Like "gay" (once "merry"), "queer" (once "strange"), "nunnery" (once "brothel"), and "fishmonger" (once "pimp"), the word has been the unfortunate victim of semantic change...