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"Lycidas" () is a poem by
John Milton
John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem '' Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political ...
, written in 1637 as a
pastoral
A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depicts ...
elegy
An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...
. It first appeared in a 1638 collection of elegies, ''Justa Edouardo King Naufrago'', dedicated to the memory of
Edward King, a friend of Milton at
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
who drowned when his ship sank in the
Irish Sea
The Irish Sea or , gv, Y Keayn Yernagh, sco, Erse Sie, gd, Muir Èireann , Ulster-Scots: ''Airish Sea'', cy, Môr Iwerddon . is an extensive body of water that separates the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. It is linked to the Ce ...
off the coast of Wales in August 1637. The poem is 193 lines in length and is irregularly rhymed. Many of the other poems in the compilation are in Greek and Latin, but "Lycidas" is one of the poems written in English.
Milton republished the poem in 1645.
History of the name Lycidas
Herodotus
Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire (now Bodrum, Turkey) and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria ( Italy). He is known f ...
in his Book IX (written in the 5th century BC) mentions an Athenian councilor in
Salamis, "a man named Lycidas" (
Λυκίδας), who proposed to his fellow citizens that they submit to a compromise offered by their enemy,
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
King
Xerxes I
Xerxes I ( peo, 𐎧𐏁𐎹𐎠𐎼𐏁𐎠 also Khshayārsha; grc-gre, Ξέρξης ; – August 465 BC), commonly known as Xerxes the Great, was the fourth King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, ruling from 486 to 465 BC. He was the so ...
, with whom they were at war. Suspected of collusion with the enemy for suggesting the compromise, Lycidas was stoned to death by "those in the council and those outside,
howere so enraged....
th all the uproar in Salamis over Lycidas, the Athenian women soon found out what had happened; whereupon, without a word from the men, they got together, and, each one urging on her neighbor and taking her along with the crowd, flocked to Lycidas' house and stoned his wife and children."
The name later occurs in
Theocritus
Theocritus (; grc-gre, Θεόκριτος, ''Theokritos''; born c. 300 BC, died after 260 BC) was a Greek poet from Sicily and the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry.
Life
Little is known of Theocritus beyond what can be inferred from hi ...
's ''Idylls'', where Lycidas is most prominently a poet-goatherd encountered on the trip of "Idyll vii." The name appears several times in
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...
and is a typically
Doric Doric may refer to:
* Doric, of or relating to the Dorians of ancient Greece
** Doric Greek, the dialects of the Dorians
* Doric order, a style of ancient Greek architecture
* Doric mode, a synonym of Dorian mode
* Doric dialect (Scotland)
* Doric ...
shepherd's name, appropriate for the
pastoral
A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depicts ...
mode. A Lycidas appears in Ovid's ''
Metamorphoses
The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the wo ...
'' as a centaur.
Lycidas also occurs in Lucan's ''
Pharsalia
''De Bello Civili'' (; ''On the Civil War''), more commonly referred to as the ''Pharsalia'', is a Roman epic poem written by the poet Lucan, detailing the civil war between Julius Caesar and the forces of the Roman Senate led by Pompey the Gre ...
'', where in iii.636 a sailor named Lycidas is ripped by an iron hook from the deck of a ship.
"Lycidas" as pastoral elegy
By naming Edward King "Lycidas," Milton follows "the tradition of memorializing a loved one through Pastoral poetry, a practice that may be traced from ancient Greek Sicily through Roman culture and into the Christian Middle Ages and early Renaissance."
Milton describes King as "selfless," even though he was of the clergy – a statement both bold and, at the time, controversial among lay people: "Through allegory, the speaker accuses God of unjustly punishing the young, selfless King, whose premature death ended a career that would have unfolded in stark contrast to the majority of the ministers and bishops of the Church of England, whom the speaker condemns as depraved, materialistic, and selfish."
Authors and poets in the Renaissance used the pastoral mode in order to represent an ideal of life in a simple, rural landscape. Literary critics have emphasized the artificial character of pastoral nature: "The pastoral was in its very origin a sort of toy, literature of make-believe."
[ Milton himself "recognized the pastoral as one of the natural modes of literary expression," employing it throughout "Lycidas" in order to achieve a strange juxtaposition between death and the remembrance of a loved one.
The poem itself begins with a pastoral image of ]laurels
''Laurus nobilis'' is an aromatic evergreen tree or large shrub with green, Glossary of botanical terms#glabrous, glabrous (smooth) leaves. It is in the flowering plant family Lauraceae. It is native to the Mediterranean region and is used as ...
and myrtles, "symbols of poetic fame; as their berries are not yet ripe, the poet is not yet ready to take up his pen".[Hale, James]
"Lycidas."
Masterplots II: Poetry 2002: MagillonLiterature Plus. EBSCOhost. 3 Nov2008 However, the speaker is so filled with sorrow for the death of Lycidas that he finally begins to write an elegy. "Yet the untimely death of young Lycidas requires equally untimely verses from the poet. Invoking the muses of poetic inspiration, the shepherd-poet takes up the task, partly, he says, in hope that his own death will not go unlamented." The speaker continues by recalling the life of the young shepherds together "in the 'pastures' of Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
." Milton uses the pastoral idiom to allegorize experiences he and King shared as fellow students at Christ's College, Cambridge. The university is represented as the "self-same hill" upon which the speaker and Lycidas were "nurst"; their studies are likened to the shepherds' work of "drving Ving may refer to:
*Ving Rhames (born 1959), American actor
*Ving'hawe, administrative ward in the Mpwapwa district of the Dodoma Region of Tanzania
*Lee Ving (born Lee James Capalero in 1949), lead singer of the 1980s punk band ''Fear''
*Star-ving, ...
a field" and "Batt’ning… flocks"; classmates are "Rough satyrs" and "fauns with clov’n heel" and the dramatic and comedic pastimes they pursued are "Rural ditties… / Temper’ed to th' oaten flute"; a Cambridge professor is "old Damoetas holov’d to hear our song". The poet then notes the "'heavy change' suffered by nature now that Lycidas is gone—a ‘pathetic fallacy
The phrase pathetic fallacy is a literary term for the attribution of human emotion and conduct to things found in nature that are not human. It is a kind of personification that occurs in poetic descriptions, when, for example, clouds seem sullen ...
’ in which the willows, hazel groves, woods, and caves lament Lycidas's death." In the next section of the poem, "The shepherd-poet reflects… that thoughts of how Lycidas might have been saved are futile… turning from lamenting Lycidas’s death to lamenting the futility of all human labor." This section is followed by an interruption in the swain's monologue by the voice of Phoebus
Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label=Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label= ...
, "the sun-god, an image drawn out of the mythology of classical Roman poetry, horeplies that fame is not mortal but eternal, witnessed by Jove
Jupiter ( la, Iūpiter or , from Proto-Italic "day, sky" + "father", thus " sky father" Greek: Δίας or Ζεύς), also known as Jove ( gen. ''Iovis'' ), is the god of the sky and thunder, and king of the gods in ancient Roman religio ...
(God) himself on judgment day." At the end of the poem, King/Lycidas appears as a resurrected figure, being delivered, through the resurrecting power of Christ, by the waters that lead to his death: "Burnished by the sun's rays at dawn, King resplendently ascends heavenward to his eternal reward."
Although on its surface "Lycidas" reads like a straightforward pastoral elegy, a closer reading reveals its complexity. "Lycidas" has been called "'probably the most perfect piece of pure literature in existence…’ mployingpatterns of structure, prosody, and imagery to maintain a dynamic coherence. The syntax of the poem is full of 'impertinent auxiliary assertions' that contribute valuably to the experience of the poem." The piece itself is remarkably dynamic, enabling many different styles and patterns to overlap, so that "the loose ends of any one pattern disappear into the interweavings of the others."[
"Lycidas" also has its detractors, including 18th-century literary critic and polymath ]Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...
, who infamously called the pastoral form "easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting," and said of Milton's elegy:
It is not to be considered as the effusion of real passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arethuse and Mincius, nor tells of rough satyrs and fauns with cloven heel. Where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief.
Johnson was reacting to what he saw as the irrelevance of the pastoral idiom in Milton's age and his own, and to its ineffectiveness at conveying genuine emotion. Johnson said that conventional pastoral images—for instance, the representation of the speaker and the deceased as shepherds—were "long ago exhausted," and so improbable that they "always forc dissatisfaction on the mind." Johnson also criticized the blending of Christian and pagan images and themes in "Lycidas," which he saw as the poem's "grosser fault." He said "Lycidas" positions the "trifling fictions" of "heathen deities—Jove
Jupiter ( la, Iūpiter or , from Proto-Italic "day, sky" + "father", thus " sky father" Greek: Δίας or Ζεύς), also known as Jove ( gen. ''Iovis'' ), is the god of the sky and thunder, and king of the gods in ancient Roman religio ...
and Phoebus
Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label=Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label= ...
, Neptune
Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and the farthest known planet in the Solar System. It is the fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 times ...
and Æolus" alongside "the most awful and sacred truths, such as ought never to be polluted with such irreverend combinations.
Johnson concluded: "Surely no man could have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure had he not known its author."
The Uncouth Swain
Though commonly considered to be a monody, 'Lycidas' in fact features two distinct voices, the first of which belongs to the uncouth swain (or shepherd). The work opens with the swain, who finds himself grieving for the death of his friend, Lycidas, in an idyllic pastoral world. In his article entitled "Belief and Disbelief in Lycidas," Lawrence W. Hyman states that the swain is experiencing a "loss of faith in a world order that allows death to strike a young man." Similarly, Lauren Shohet asserts that the swain is projecting his grief upon the classical images of the pastoral setting at this point in the elegy.[Shohet, Lauren]
"Subjects and Objects in Lycidas."
Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Volume 47, Number 2, Summer 2005, pp. 101–119, 103
Throughout the poem, the swain uses both Christian and Pagan concepts, and mentally locates Lycidas' body in both settings, according to Russel Fraser.[Fraser, Russell]
"Milton’s Two Poets."
Studies in English Literature (Rice); Winter94, Vol. 34 Issue 1, p109, 10p., 115 Examples of this are the mention of Death as an animate being, the "Sisters of the Sacred Well," Orpheus
Orpheus (; Ancient Greek: Ὀρφεύς, classical pronunciation: ; french: Orphée) is a Thracian bard, legendary musician and prophet in ancient Greek religion. He was also a renowned poet and, according to the legend, travelled with Jaso ...
, the blind Fury that struck Lycidas down, and the scene in which Lycidas is imagined to have become a regional deity (a "genius
Genius is a characteristic of original and exceptional insight in the performance of some art or endeavor that surpasses expectations, sets new standards for future works, establishes better methods of operation, or remains outside the capabiliti ...
of the shore") after drowning. Since Lycidas, like King, drowned, there is no body to be found, and the absence of the corpse is of great concern to the swain.[
Ultimately, the swain's grief and loss of faith are conquered by a "belief in immortality." Many scholars have pointed out that there is very little logical basis within the poem for this conclusion, but that a reasonable process is not necessary for 'Lycidas' to be effective. Fraser will argue that Milton's voice intrudes briefly upon the swain's to tell a crowd of fellow swains that Lycidas is not in fact dead (here one sees belief in immortality). This knowledge is inconsistent with the speaker's "uncouth" character.
]
The Pilot
Upon entering the poem at line 109, the voice of the "Pilot of the Galilean lake," generally believed to represent St. Peter, serves as a judge, condemning the multitude of unworthy members found among the clergy of the Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...
. Similarly, St. Peter fills the position of Old Testament
The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...
prophet when he speaks of the clergy's "moral decay" and the grave consequences of their leadership. He then compares these immoral church leaders to wolves among sheep and warns of the "two-handed engine". According to E. S. de Beer, this "two-handed engine" is thought to be a powerful weapon and an allusion to a portion of the Book of Zechariah
The Book of Zechariah, attributed to the Hebrew prophet Zechariah, is included in the Twelve Minor Prophets in the Hebrew Bible.
Historical context
Zechariah's prophecies took place during the reign of Darius the Great and were contempora ...
.
Concerning St. Peter's role as a "prophet," the term is meant in the Biblical sense, de Beer claims, and not in the more modern sense of the word. Since Biblical prophets more often served as God's messengers than as seers, de Beer states that Milton was not attempting to foretell the likely future of the church via St. Peter.
De Beer continues on to note that St. Peter's appearance in "Lycidas" is likely unrelated to his position as head of the Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
. Neither was St. Peter ascribed any particular position within the Church of England. Instead, de Beer argues that St. Peter appears simply as an apostolic authority, through whom Milton might express his frustration with unworthy members of the English clergy. Fraser also agrees that St. Peter, indeed, serves as a vehicle for Milton's voice to enter the poem.
The Church was so thrown off by the poem that they banned it for nearly twenty years after Milton's death.
The conclusion
Several interpretations of the ending have been proposed. Jonathan Post claims the poem ends with a sort of retrospective picture of the poet having "sung" the poem into being. According to critic Lauren Shohet, Lycidas is transcendently leaving the earth, becoming immortal, rising from the pastoral plane in which he is too involved or tangled from the objects that made him.[ She claims that "he is diffused into, and animates, the last location of his corpse—his experience of body-as-object… neither fully immanent (since his body is lost) nor fully transcendent (since he remains on earth)."
With an ambiguous ending, the poem does not just end with a death, but instead, it just begins. The monody clearly ends with a death and an absolute end but also moves forward and comes full circle because it takes a look back at the pastoral world left behind making the ambivalence of the end a mixture of creation and destruction. Nonetheless "thy large recompense" also has a double meaning. As Paul Alpers states, Lycidias' gratitude in heaven is a payment for his loss. The word "thy" is both an object and mediator of "large recompense." Thus, the meaning also maintains the literal meaning which is that of a sacred higher being or the pagan genius.
The final lines of the poem:
:And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills,
:And now was dropt into the Western bay;
:At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew:
:To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new
may refer to Milton's imminent departure to Italy, and they are reminiscent of the end of Virgil's 10th '']Eclogue
An eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. Poems in the genre are sometimes also called bucolics.
Overview
The form of the word ''eclogue'' in contemporary English developed from Middle English , which came from Latin , whi ...
'',
''Justa Edouardo King Naufrago''
"Lycidas" was originally published in a poetic miscellany
A miscellany is a collection of various pieces of writing by different authors. Meaning a mixture, medley, or assortment, a miscellany can include pieces on many subjects and in a variety of different forms. In contrast to anthologies, whose aim ...
alongside thirty-five other poems elegizing the death of Edward King. Collected at Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
, most of the poems were written by academics at the university who were committed to the conservative church politics of Archbishop Laud
William Laud (; 7 October 1573 – 10 January 1645) was a bishop in the Church of England. Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Charles I in 1633, Laud was a key advocate of Charles I's religious reforms, he was arrested by Parliament in 16 ...
. Among the poets were John Cleveland
John Cleveland (16 June 1613 – 29 April 1658) was an English poet who supported the Royalist cause in the English Civil War. He was best known for political satire.
Early life
Cleveland was born in Loughborough, the son of Thomas Cleveland, ...
, Joseph Beaumont
Joseph Beaumont (13 March 1616 – 23 November 1699) was an English clergyman, academic and poet.
Life
The son of John Beaumont, clothier, and of Sarah Clarke, his wife, he was born at Hadleigh, Suffolk, on 13 March 1616. He was educated at Ha ...
, and Henry More
Henry More (; 12 October 1614 – 1 September 1687) was an English philosopher of the Cambridge Platonist school.
Biography
Henry was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire on 12 October 1614. He was the seventh son of Alexander More, mayor of Gran ...
. Milton, on the other hand, who reported that he had been "Church-outed by the prelates," had failed to achieve a position at Cambridge after his graduation, and his religious views were becoming more radical. The style and form of his poem also strongly contrasts from the other texts in the collection. While most of the poetry adopts a baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
aesthetic linked to the Laudian ceremonialism that was in vogue in the 1630s, Milton wrote "Lycidas" in the outmoded pastoral
A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depicts ...
style. "Lycidas" may actually be satirizing the poetic work featured throughout the ''Justa Edouardo King Naufrago''.
1645 reprint
Milton republished the poem in his 1645 collection ''Poems of Mr. John Milton''. To this version is added a brief prose preface:
: In this MONODY the Author bewails a learned Friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish seas, 1637. And by occasion foretells the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their height.
When Milton published this version, in 1645, the Long Parliament
The Long Parliament was an English Parliament which lasted from 1640 until 1660. It followed the fiasco of the Short Parliament, which had convened for only three weeks during the spring of 1640 after an 11-year parliamentary absence. In Septem ...
, to which Milton held allegiance, was in power; thus Milton could add the prophetic note—in hindsight—about the destruction of the "corrupted clergy," the "blind mouths" (119) of the poem.
Influence
The poem was exceedingly popular. It was hailed as Milton's best poem, and by some as the greatest lyrical poem in the English language. Yet it was detested for its artificiality by Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...
, who found "the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleasing" and complained that "in this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new."
It is from a line in "Lycidas" that Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Clayton Wolfe (October 3, 1900 – September 15, 1938) was an American novelist of the early 20th century.
Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels as well as many short stories, dramatic works, and novellas. He is known for mixing highly origin ...
took the name of his novel ''Look Homeward, Angel
''Look Homeward, Angel: A Story of the Buried Life'' is a 1929 novel by Thomas Wolfe. It is Wolfe's first novel, and is considered a highly autobiographical American coming-of-age story. The character of Eugene Gant is generally believed to be a ...
'':
:Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth:
:And, O ye Dolphins', waft the hapless youth. (163–164)
The title of Howard Spring's 1940 political novel
Political fiction employs narrative to comment on political events, systems and theories. Works of political fiction, such as political novels, often "directly criticize an existing society or present an alternative, even fantast ...
'' Fame is the Spur'' takes its title from the poem, as does ''The Sheep Look Up
''The Sheep Look Up'' is a science fiction novel by British author John Brunner, first published in 1972. The novel is decidedly dystopian; the book deals with the deterioration of the environment in the United States. It was nominated for th ...
'' by John Brunner which is taken from line 125.
The title of the short story "Wash Far Away" by John Berryman
John Allyn McAlpin Berryman (born John Allyn Smith, Jr.; October 25, 1914 – January 7, 1972) was an American poet and scholar. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and is considered a key figure in th ...
from the collection ''Freedom of the Poet'' is also taken from this poem:
:Ay me! Whilst thee the shores and sounding Seas
:Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurld, (154–155)
The song "The Alphabet Business Concern (Home of Fadeless Splendour)", from the album ''Heaven Born and Ever Bright
''Heaven Born and Ever Bright'' is the third studio album by British rock band Cardiacs. It was produced by Tim Smith, engineered by David Murder and mixed by both. Due to Rough Trade going bankrupt soon after the album's release, it was scarce ...
'' (1992) by Cardiacs
Cardiacs are an English rock band formed in Kingston upon Thames by Tim Smith (lead guitar and vocals) and his brother Jim (bass, backing vocals) in 1977 under the name Cardiac Arrest. The band's sound fused circus, baroque pop and medieval mu ...
, contains the lines:Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears
And slits the thin spun life. (75–76)
See also
* 1637 in poetry, the year the poem was written
* 1638 in poetry, the year the poem was published
References
Further reading
* Patrides, C. A. ''Lycidas: The Tradition and the Poem'' (Holt, Rinehart, 1961) LCCN 61005930
* Patrides, C. A. ''Milton's Lycidas: The Tradition and the Poem'' new and revised edition, (University of Missouri, 1983)
External links
*
Full text at The Milton Reading Room
{{John Milton
1637 poems
1638 poems
Poetry by John Milton