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.
“Lycidas” opens with a brief introduction of fourteen lines and then falls into three main portions, each introduced by a separate invocation of a watery spirit. Each of these sections opens with a fresh lament and then builds to a climax that demonstrates the hope that is to be found in Christ. The first section begins with an appeal to the “Sisters of the sacred well,” the nine muses of the Hippocrene in Helicon (15). The note of despair sounded here is founded on the cruel irony that despite all his diligent preparation for the future, Lycidas never amounted to anything because he died before he had the chance to succeed. This truncation of promising talent has had a profound effect upon the poet because, as he states in line 23, he and Lycidas were “nurst upon the self-same hill,” and he has been as devoted to personal preparation as the deceased had been. Now he has witnessed all that self-discipline seemingly go to waste in an unexpected and unavoidable death. This causes the poet to question the worth of such self-denying labor. “Alas! What boots it with uncessant care/ To tend the homely slighted shepherd’s trade . . . ?/ Were it not better done as others use to sport with Amaryllis in the shade” (64-68)? He notes that despite his best efforts he many never achieve the fame he desires, because at any time his life may be snatched away by “the blind Fury with th’abhorred shears”(75). Lycidas’ death has heightened the poet’s fear of ignominy.
It is at this point, as the poet’s panic is reaching its apex, that Phoebus intervenes. Phoebus here exemplifies the traditional pastoral qualities of a shepherd poet, and is representational of the Good Shepherd, Christ. He speaks as a prophetic priest, as a comforter who knows and understands the ways of God. He is fulfilling the task of pastoral shepherd and, in the humanist tradition, as Apollo he represents Christ. He explains that “fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil” and it cannot be found in the lips of men (78). True fame is to be found in the “perfect witness of all-knowing Jove” who sees each man’s deeds and rewards him accordingly (82). The poet need not fear that his labor has been in vain, for true honor comes from above, and God has seen His efforts.
Following the intervention of the Divine Comforter, Milton begins the poem’s second section with an invocation of the “fountain Arethuse” and the “smooth-sliding Mincius” (85-6). This second invocation signals a departure from a discussion of things of “higher mood,” and a turn to an evaluation of what Lycidas has left behind him (87). A processional of mourners is introduced that begins with Triton, who wonders why Lycidas’ ship sank, and ends with Saint Peter who laments the loss of such an able minister. The lament in this section is expressed by St. Peter, a faithful shepherd who was directly commissioned by the Good Shepherd. (“Feed my lambs” Christ says to him in John 21:15.) In this passage Peter, the gate keeper of Heaven, is a spokesman of divine wrath on unfaithful shepherds. He contrasts the departed young shepherd with the many evil ones that remain. His oration sternly echoes both Ezekiel 34 and John 10:12 where God’s people are represented as sheep, and worthless ministers as hirelings that feed themselves at the sheeps’ expense and allow wild animals into the fold. “Blind Mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold/ A Sheep-hook . . . their lean and flashy songs/ Grate on their scrannel Pipes of wretched straw” (119-24). Peter’s frustration at the loss of a good shepherd instead of any number of these hirelings is offset, however, by his fittingly prophetic statement of impending judgement. He takes hope in the fact that “that two-handed engine at the door stands ready to smite once, and smite no more” in an act of judgement that will destroy not only the false ministers but also the wolf they have allowed to enter the fold (130-1). This image of divine judgement, regardless of the form it takes, serves to illustrate the hope that the oppressed in life can have when they look to the final result.
The final invocation is of Alpheus, the river-god who in his desire pursued Arethuse. The procession of mourners being ended, Alpheus is asked to “call the vales, and bid them hither cast/ Their Bells and Flowrets of a thousand hues” so that they may be spread about the hearse of the dead Lycidas (134-5). This act is the final expression of grief in the poem, and it focuses upon the loss of Lycidas the “hapless youth” (164). No longer is the poet concerned with the implications of the loss of Lycidas the skilled singer, or with the lamentable passing of an honest and good shepherd; the sorrow here is strictly for the youth who was cut off in his prime. As the poem has progressed to this point, the poet has gradually shifted the focus of grief from himself and his fear of ignominy, to society and its larger concern with unfaithful shepherds, and finally to the young man Lycidas and the problem of death. In so doing, the poet was directed the reader to shift his thoughts away from the implications of Lycidas’ death to the actual problem of death. He has confronted the most irreparable source of human grief and despair. It is now that the loss is most clearly seen; for although other singers will rise and other trustworthy shepherds will pastor flocks, Lycidas will never rise again. Herein lies the avenue of the Good Shepherd’s ultimate victory.
“Weep no more, woeful Shepherds weep no more,” for Lycidas will indeed rise again “through the dear might of him that walk’d the waves” (165, 177). Here the poet uses the lovely image of the dawning sun, which rises anew from the sea each morning to represent the final victory that Christ has achieved for Lycidas. The watery grave that has served as a sign of his defeat throughout the poem has been conquered in a single stroke and is now a sign of his regeneration. Christ overcame the water and death, and through His power Lycidas does as well. The Good Shepherd leads his sheep home to the heavenly pasture, a place “Where other groves, and other streams along” (174). At last the shepherds cease their lamenting, and Lycidas becomes “the Genius of the shore,” a symbol of the victory that each person can achieve in Christ (183). With this concluding hopeful image, the pastoral singer finishes his elegy, and Milton sends him away in a final couplet that embodies the poem’s hopeful theme: “At last he rose, and twich’t his Mantle blue:/ Tomorrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new” (193-4).
“Lycidas” is a picture of newfound hope in Christ that Milton paints with pastoral imagery. He uses classical conventions and the humanist fusion of classical and Christian elements to illustrate his own personal faith in the Good Shepherd. In so doing, he presents a message that can be applied to every reader, for every reader will face death. “Lycidas,” the work with which John Milton declared himself to the world, stands as a lasting monument to his faith in the Good Shepherd.