I am sure that Marvell meant from lesser to greater pleasures. There were some complaints about these stanzas, iirc - "annihilating" doesn't mean "reducing," for example. And Empson will always offer a strict construction as a defense of lines he loves even if they're somewhat ungrammatical ("less" for "lesser", e.g.).

This is one of the great things that ambiguity makes possible: the resonances that come with the strict grammatical construction. They can indeed swamp the grammar and become all the more important thereby.

I love Some Versions of Pastoral. I love all of Empson. I believe I have once or twice referred in print -- certainly in talks -- to "the sacred Empson" (in like with Shelley's "sacred Milton").

In his biography he is quoted as saying that he goes over his essays one final time after a couple of glasses of beer, just to make sure he's sounding as breezy as he wants to.