Pastoral Perfection: Why Milton’s Lycidas is a Classicist’s Masterpiece
John Milton was a poet, intellectual and civil servant who lived from 1608 to 1674 through times of dramatic religious and political instability and change. He is most renowned for being the author of Paradise Lost, a blank verse epic poem which is arguably one of the greatest works of English literature and momentous in a religious context due to his endeavour “to justifie the ways of God to man”.
Despite his incredible renown, much of his other poetic works haven’t received as much attention in the public sphere. His poem Lycidas falls into this category. It is a pastoral elegy which was written in blank and rhymed verse in 1637 as part of a memorial collection for one of Milton’s few university friends, Edward King. King was also at Christ’s College, Cambridge, with Milton and wrote poetry too during his time there. Whilst travelling home to Ireland in August of 1637, King’s ship struck a rock off the Welsh coast and was shipwrecked, the event in which King drowned. He was a reasonably successful academic at his college and worked as a tutor there but had ambitions to go into the church — a key feature in Milton’s poem for him. The untimely death of this young peer at the college led to the dedication of a collection of elegies entitled Justa Edouardo King Naufrago in which a number of students and academics took part. The character of Lycidas, Milton’s allegorical substitute for King, appears in the origins of the pastoral genre when Theocritus, in his 7th Idyll, presents him as a goatherd who is “a fine man of Cydonia” and was encountered “thanks to the Muses”. Adopting this figure in the place of his departed friend was very suitable as Milton decided to dedicate to King’s memory a pastoral elegy. There are many ways in which Milton shows his mastery of the literature and theology of the ancients through this poem yet detailing them all would be a lengthy task. In my view, the most valuable classical and poetic quality of Lycidas stems from Milton’s ability to work within this academic genre and to innovate upon it in emotionally sensitive ways. These two actions testify to Milton’s incredible ability, well worthy of his ongoing fame.
With this first skill — his workings within the pastoral genre — he manages to involve the ancient literary tropes whilst maintaining a striking sensitivity. Milton involves a plethora of pastoral and other classical imagery in the formats of nature, pastoral activities, eroticism and epic poetry.
The references to the natural and idyllic world are consistent with the expectations of a pastoral poem. This can be seen in Milton’s details in the early lines concerning the “Laurels”, “Myrtles”, “Ivy” and “Berries”. From this starting point, Milton has established the pastoral environment and this theme is continued until the end of the elegy with the gathering of flowers for the assumed cortège. Here, the narrator asks for “Flourets of a thousand hues”, “the rathe Primrose”, the “white Pink and the Pansie freakt with jeat” as well as the “glowing Violet”, “Musk-rose” and “Cowslips”. The choice of flora represents the expected varieties inherited from the pastoral legacy yet with the offerings of an idyllic British landscape. This merging of the content of the classical with that of the ‘English garden’ offers a merging of the classical as well as King and Milton’s ideals of nature. This brings the reverence of the classical into the application of the everyday — a feature which reflects solemnly on the everyday and inconsequential passing of a young man. The reflection of nature and the banality of human mortality seen in Malherbe’s, 1599, “Rose elle a vécu” could have been a contemporary influence for Milton in this respect. Although the inclusion of nature is necessary for it to be a pastoral poem, Milton’s very local scale adds to the pathos felt by the reader for the rather insignificant King. This sympathy is a vast improvement on classical pastoral for modern readers as often we can be left feeling cold by the very glorious yet anodyne environment such as we find in Theocritus 1st Idyll. It is surprising for us that the narrated story of Daphnis’ death details how a number of figures from mythology visit him who are devoid of any sympathy and comfort for Daphnis in his last moments. Therefore, Milton’s efforts to induce our sympathy for the poem’s situation is a sensitive improvement upon the legacy of pastoral elegy.
Milton embodies the pastoral setting through the activities the narrator and Lycidas take part in. Portraying himself as the “uncouth swain”, him and Lycidas “were nurst upon the self-same hill”. Their partnership in their pastoral life continues as, “together both”, they “fed the same flock”. The narrator stresses that “the Rural ditties were not mute” and “temper’d to th’oaten flute” both “Rough Satyrs danc’d” with “Fauns with clov’n heel”. Again, a staple feature of the pastoral genre is the art of the herdsmen and their peaceful musical contests. Depicted by Virgil in his Eclogues, these activities were clearly a necessary branding for the pastoral genre but soon developed the opportunity for allegory by their dream-like irrelevance. Milton picks up this idea and runs with it, mirroring all the pastoral activities with his and King’s life at Cambridge. This parallel is furthered when “Camus, reverend Sire” asks who has “reft my dearest pledge”. Camus is the deified embodiment of the River Cam and is a striking innovation from Milton to once again link this idyllic genre with his peer’s lifestyle. Milton makes another meaningful parallel which was further used by other renaissance poets between the role of the shepherd and a religious leader. King had proposed that his mission was to join the church and therefore act as a herdsman for his congregation which Milton denotes when they both “drove a field”. This religious adaptation has more profound impacts to be later explored.
Lycidas contains a faint eroticism in line with much pastoral poetry. The Eclogues contain much erotic turmoil and the pastoral genre is certainly a setting for sexualised content as we can see in the storylines of the ‘Greek Novels’. Milton develops a subtle erotic environment in certain parts of the poem by focusing on Lycidas’ youth and face. Such a decision finds reflection in the erotic elements of Sappho’s poetry which follows similar focal points of youth and facial beauty. Lycidas’ narrator laments the “remorseless deep clos’d o’er the head of your lov’d Lycidas” and the event that “sunk so low that sacred head of yours”. Likewise Sappho, when discussing the girls of her circle, focuses on “your fine cheeks” which deserve “rich gifts” and requests one to “release that fineness in your irises”. Milton’s narrator refers to the dead man as the “young Lycidas” — a “young swain” — who he depicts as a “hapless youth”. In the same way Sappho craves youth as shown in her poetic advice that “there is no other girl than she, Bridegroom” and encourages her “girls” to “chase the violet-bosomed Muses’ bright gifts”. Youth as beauty is portrayed in a different light when she laments that “age weighs heavily on me” and that she “can’t stand being the old one any longer”. Milton has worked his material into one that is especially suitable to the realm of pastoral elegy and pulls in other generic erotic themes to display a personal endearment to King in the light of his sudden death.
King’s memorial poem is also infused with themes from the lofty world of epic. The genre of pastoral poetry received the legacy of epic and this is also necessarily registered by Milton. Most explicitly, Milton focuses on the epic trope of inauspicious boats. From the Homeric views towards the boat that brought Paris to Greece and Helen off to Troy and the ominous sentiments of the collapse of the golden age from the vessel used in Apollonius’ Argonautica, the criticism and suspicion surrounding sea-faring vessels received lots of attention. This was a feature which warranted imitation in Catullus 64 in which Ariadne prays that “Almighty Jove, if only in that first of times, Cecropian hulls had never touched the Cnossian shore”. And again, Euripides’ Medea is testament to this view when the nurse laments “Would God the Argo had never winged the seas To Colchis through the blue Symplegades: No shaft of riven pine in Pelion’s glen Shaped that first oar-blade in the hands of men…”. Similarly Medea voices her own hatred of the boat in the Argonautica:“O my mother, take this farewell from me as I go far hence. Farewell Chalciope, and all my home. Would that the sea, stranger, had dashed thee to pieces, before you came to the Colchian land!” In the same vein in Lycidas, after the narrator has been assured by Hippotades that “The Ayre was calm … on the level brine”, he curses the cause of his loss — “It was that fatall and perfidious Bark Built in th’eclipse, and rigg’d with curses dark, That sunk so low that sacred head of thine”. Milton has applied this classical trope of resentment around sea-faring, displayed throughout much ancient literature, for such a fitting situation to convey all the anger and bitterness of his personal grief.
The next section covers the ways in which Milton has developed areas in order to express a religious purpose. Not only are there many biblical references in the poem, but he has adapted classical poetic concepts in order to express his theological message. In this sense, I shall first look at Milton’s use of poetic fame.
Reading any poetry that comes under the banner of classics, you will encounter the pursuit of fame. Whether affected and insincere or the veritable inspiration for a poet’s efforts, many authors — particularly elegists — present this as a key concern. At the end of Amores 1, Ovid famously states: “each man’s fame protects him as he deserves. So, even when the final flame has consumed me, I shall live and a considerable part of me will survive.” Callimachus denotes that he too has achieved fame that has even reached the king of gods: “With that he concluded, and in response I said, “Lycidas my friend, the Muses have taught me too many good songs as I tended my herd in the hills, and their reputation may even have reached the throne of Zeus”. As is evident, fame and its achievement is a key issue for such poets and likewise for Milton’s narrator. In the light of Lycidas’ premature death, the narrator, suspicious and disillusioned, asks: “What boots it with incessant care To tend the homely, slighted shepherd’s trade, And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?” He finally claims that “Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights and live laborious days;” but even this is pointless as up “Comes the blind Fury with th’abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life.” It is here that Milton develops a foothold for his religious message and has Apollo answer the narrator that the mortality displayed in Lycidas is not the case with ‘fame’: “Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil”. This is in accordance with the claims of ancient poets yet Milton develops his sense of ‘fame’ with a christian slant — reflecting the promise of an afterlife — which places it with a certain religious worth, ensuring Lycidas’ (therefore King’s) legacy and endurance — “Of so much fame in Heav’n expect thy meed”.
Pastoral poetry is witness to much thinly-veiled criticism of competitors. We can see this in Theocritus’ seventh Idyll where the first person character of Simichidas has a go at “the builder who strives to produce a house as high as Mt. Oromedon and those fledgelings of the Muses who vainly struggle to crow in rivalry with the Chian bard”. Milton picks up this idea of criticism, enabling it into an opportunity to criticise the state of religious leaders in the church at that time. St Peter is the mouthpiece of this criticism for the worthless shepherds — “What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; And when they list their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw, The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed”. St Peter is further angered that it is Lycidas who has died and Milton generates pathos by the saint’s anger towards those who have survived, highlighting further their unsuitability for their vocation: “How well could I have spar’d for thee, young swain, Enow of such as for their bellies’ sake Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold?” This leads into the possibly discomforting christian idea of a final judgement and retribution as those “Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook” will be met by “that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.” Considered the most confusing and debatable couplet of the poem, one can make an easier link with this statement and another of Milton’s pastoral developments — the Garden of Eden. In fact, this thematic connection was often drawn by other renaissance Christian poets. This renowned couplet allows for a deeper connection to be made between the idyllic pastoral background of the poetic genre and the legendary garden of Eden because of the orthodox and wider Christian links concerning the biblical phenomenon of the ‘flaming sword’. In Genesis 3:24, we read that a cherub was set outside the entrance to the garden of Eden with a flaming sword after Adam and Eve’s banishment. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, it is believed that after Christ’s resurrection, this flaming sword was removed from preventing access back into the paradisaical garden. So therefore, although the couplet sheds little explicit light as to what this “engine” is referring to, the illusory value invites deeper interpretation and develops a stronger link with the pastoral setting and the natural setting of great worth to Judeo-Christian traditions.
Throughout the vast majority of the poem, Milton keeps within the setting and restrictions of his chosen genre and all his innovations for his ‘Christian message’ purposes are subtle and in character with pastoral expectations. However, towards the end of the poem, the arrival of St Peter, “The Pilot of the Galilean lake”, makes a stark change in the poem’s atmosphere and direction. It is not a lament or a competition or an eroticised story from mythology. Rather, St Peter’s words carry the weight of a threat and a fearful evaluation of a society crammed with immoral religious leaders. His reference to the work of a personified evil — “Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace” — imbues the poem with a sinister tone rarely noted in previous pastoral. The saint’s presence and proclamation are depicted as so frightening that the narrator needs to ask the deities of “Alpheus” and the “Sicilian Muse” to “return” as “the dread voice is past That shrunk thy streams”. This is a shattering of the pastoral mirage as seen in no other master of the genre. I believe that this is Milton’s greatest innovation in the genre for the shocking fracture of the poem’s atmosphere invites inquiry from the reader. Although many of the proposed messages have a lack of clarity in their meaning, by breaking the form, Milton forces the reader to look for other senses in the poem as it is no longer dictated by pastoral requirements. It is then here that we may pick up on the possible purpose of Milton’s to display a certain religious worth in his poem. In its pastoral sense, Lycidas, is the most fitting way to remember King, but once the setting is broken, the other aspects, particularly the warning to the church, find their way to the fore in the area of the poem which breaks its content’s restrictions. This effect was missed by the 18th century poet Samuel Johnson who states that the “representation may be allegorical” yet “the true meaning is so uncertain and remote, that it is never sought, because it cannot be known when it is found”.
Overall, Milton shows his awareness of the classical genres he has chosen to write in and proves his ability by the sensitivity with which he implements these tropes, not to the disadvantage of the power of his poem. Again, Johnson appears to be ignorant to this when he writes that “in this poem … there is no art, for there is nothing new ”. Lycidas is not crowded with self-conscious posturing or excessively niche references — it is incredibly moving. Milton masters an ability to induce pathos by mingling the reverence of life (felt through his idyllic pastoral and deified backdrop) with its insignificance expressed in the narrator’s grief alongside humbling ‘small-world’ features. This seems like such a fitting way to mark the passing of an educated, yet unknown, beloved friend who’s demise seemed cruelly early and unremembered.
Concerning his religious aims, his innovations promote a challenging reading, reflecting his challenging of the current state of the church. Johnson again is critical of his combination of King’s death — “trifling fictions” — and the Christian faith, as such combinations are “indecent, and at least approach impiety”, sentiments which he believed “the writer to not have been conscious”. Johnson here has missed the quality of the poem. Milton’s creative adaptations develop the links between his message and the pastoral genre, saving the most frightening and severe aspect of the whole work for the most reverent purpose.
So, I can only encourage people to go off and read Lycidas. It makes for good reading not only from a ‘classical-literary-appreciation’ point of view but mainly from its honest exploration of mortality. Milton does not eulogise over King through the poem but conveys the distress caused by the passing of a peer and one with whom he is unsure over his actual relationship. His confusion and resentment are powerful as well as the sympathy invoked towards King. Mastery of his genre and the legacy within which he writes is displayed throughout the poem. Possibly most importantly, it is the manner in which he integrates his religious message offering his comfort for the human condition — hope for immortality — which makes for the most powerful reading.
