Note: I wrote this paper for a 500-level survey of Milton that I took in the fall of my second year as an English major at Bob Jones University. The class teacher was my favorite Bob Jones professor (and the favorite of many literature students at BJU), Caren Silvester. I took eleven classes from her over the course of my BA and MA studies, but I never received higher praise for any paper than I did for this one. She asked for a copy for her permanent file. The analysis in the paper demonstrates the habit of mind that characterized so much of my literary analysis while I was a literary student and so much of the rest of my thinking since–break a thing down into its constituent parts to understand how the whole operates. (DL, Sept. 19, 2021)

John Milton’s “Lycidas” is a pastoral elegy written upon the death of Edward King, a Cambridge acquaintance of Milton’s who drowned at sea. It stands squarely in the pastoral tradition of Theocritus and Bion. However, “Lycidas” is more than a traditional lament for a lost friend and peer. Milton uses the pastoral apparatus to illustrate the hope that arises from despair when the sorrowful look to Christ, the Good Shepherd.