LYCIDAS: THE UNTOLD TRUE STORY
As a fellow at Christ’s College Cambridge, Edward King was a likable fellow and close friends with John Milton. He enjoyed poetry and wrote a few Latin poems himself, although their quality wasn’t particularly high. At the age of 25, he was preparing to enter the ministry, but his career suddenly came to a tragic end. On a trip to Ireland to visit his parents in 1637, King’s ship struck a rock, and the young man fell into the sea and drowned. The following year, a collection of elegies was released in King’s honor. Milton’s contribution, Lycidas, quickly became one of the more popular poems in the compilation. However, the poem also had its detractors. Samuel Johnson, while lauding Milton’s talents elsewhere, expressed near contempt for the poem. “In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new,” he complains.[1] But I think Johnson is missing the point. Lycidas offers more than a superficial perspective on death, and so I would like to look at Johnson’s criticisms and see how they measure up to the actual poem.
The Basic Plot
Lycidas begins with overtones of Vergil and other classical writers, written as a pastoral elegy. Rural life, simplicity, and grief combine, as the narrator expresses his sorrow at the death of his friend Lycidas, a common name used in ancient Greek pastorals. But Milton also goes beyond Greek myth and incorporates both English legends and Christian allegory into the poem, with references to Druids, Mona, and Camus. The first stanza mourns Lycidas’ death, “dead ere his prime” and the poet vows to remember him, refusing to let him “float upon his watery bier / Unwept.” He then requests that the Muses to help him remember Lycidas, as he himself wants to be remembered. Recollections of friendship follow, with Milton describing their work together as shepherds: “For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, / Fed the same flock, by fountain, shad, and rill; / Together both, ere the high lawns appeared / Under the opening eyelids of the Morn.” But suddenly Lycidas is gone and the fields feel empty without him, as the “wild thyme and the gadding vines o’ergrown, / And all their echoes, mourn.” Where was everybody when Lycidas fell, the mourner wonders; but even if we were there, could we have done anything? In fact, the poet argues, when it comes right down to it, what is the point of anything? Together, Lycidas and the poet had sought Fame, together they had chose “to scorn delights and live laborious days.” But then “comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears, / And slits the thin-spun life.” All their planning, all their work comes to nothing in the face of death. Suddenly Phoebus the sun-god appears, arguing that fame is not a “plant that grows on mortal soil” but is immortal. And Lycidas’ example, his pure effort as a shepherd, quickly becomes the means of comparison. He will live on, the poet argues, as the model that other shepherds should follow, for at present these false leaders “rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread” while “the hungry sheep look up, and are not fed”, devoured by wolves as the inattentive shepherds sing “their lean and fleshy songs / grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.” But God will not be mocked, asserts the poet, for his avenging angel, “that two-handed engine at the door / Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.” This brief commentary on ecclesiastical abuse then gives way to the earlier pastoral tone, as the poet calls for “bells and flowerets of a thousand hues…to strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.” Of course, the poet recognizes the impossibility of such a request, because Lycidas’ body remains “under the whelming tide” and so he calls upon the heavenly host: “Look homeward, Angel now, and melt with ruth: / And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.” Sorrow now turns into joy, as the poem takes a decidedly Christian turn: “For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead…but mounted high, / through the dear might of Him that walked the waves.” We need not mourn anymore; for Lycidas has gone on “in the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love” The poem ends by reverting to the third person, as the poet is referred to as an “uncouth Swain” who, after singing this elegy, returns to the fields, ready to continue his work.
Problems? Samuel Johnson had ‘em
So that’s the basic narrative of the poem. And, as I mentioned earlier, the poem quickly rose to the top of the poetry charts. But not everyone was as impressed with the poem as the general populace. Samuel Johnson was probably the most vehement detractor of Milton’s elegy, and gave a number of criticisms in his “Life of Milton.”
The first problem Johnson mentions is the poem’s formal irregularity, noting that “the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleasing.” And at first glance, this seems like a fair criticism. After all, Milton does not employ a regular rhyme scheme, and even leaves ten lines completely unrhymed;[2] the length of his verses also appears erratic. But the uneven rhythm of the poem was no accident; like many modern poems, Lycidas “was written smooth and rewritten rough; which [at the time] was treason.”[3] But Milton knew what he was doing; this tension within the poem serves to heighten the anguish and the disorder caused by the death of Lycidas. The repetition of keys words in the early part of the poem (like “once more” in line 1, “death” in line 8, and “Lycidas” throughout) continue to highlight the poet’s distraught emotions. But by the end of the poem, the poet’s attitude changes, and he begins to use to a more regular scheme. Even the repeated words feel calmer; “pure” and “sacred” mark a new sense of understanding within the poet.[4] The final verse is actually quite normal, with its simple rhyme scheme—abababcc—and its return to a calm pastoral setting.
Johnson’s second criticism regards the poem’s artistic qualities. Johnson had long hated the pastoral form, suggesting that it is “easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting: whatever images it can supply are long ago exhausted; and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction on the mind.” But even in using these ancient conventions, Milton gives an entirely new twist to them. Yes, we still find shepherds, flowers, the invocations of Muses, among other pastoral basics, but Milton takes these elements and subverts them, and in a sense, shows these conventions to be incomplete by themselves. Like a musical composition, Milton expands the narrow constraints of his theme, constantly modulating and resolving it. Lycidas begins with a full-fledged embrace of the pastoral form, but by the fourth stanza, we begin to see how the ancient conceptions of death and the purpose of life are unsatisfying.[5] Where were the Nymphs? Can they make sense of Lycidas’ untimely death? If death can creep up so quickly, what is the point of living morally? The pagan pastoral could not answer these questions. Most of the pastoral elegies before the time of Milton spoke of loss and grief without the benefit of a consolation, no progression from lament to triumph. The end is the tomb, the last word is death.[6] But the pastoral vehicle that Milton uses offers the poet a unique opportunity to compare the Christian view of mourning with that of the pagans. The nature imagery also serves another purpose. The use of a common form forces the reader to see the universality of the problems that the poet faces. We all see Nature, we all recognize the classical images that Milton uses. But this world that we all observe suddenly changes in the face of death. Instead of growth, we see death. Instead of maturity, we see decay.[7] By using the pastoral elegy, Milton forces his reader to question death, life, and our proper response to both.
This brings us to Johnson’s third criticism: that of the poem’s lack of an emotional edge. By using these traditional and universal images, any sense of real and personal grief becomes nullified. “He who thus grieves will excite no sympathy,” Johnson argues. “He who thus praises will confer no honor.” To a certain extent, this problem is answered by the response to Johnson’s second objection. With the pastoral form, Milton makes the grief universal, rather than simply an individual sorrow. The poem is a vehicle, intended to express a greater distress, and Milton’s personal grief after King’s death served to highlight this bigger problem.[8] The depersonalization of the grief, by removing the particulars, focuses the subject of the poem[9] as Milton attempts to transcend these very personal questions to solve the bigger issues involved with King’s death.[10] But Johnson’s problem with the poem’s emotional deficiency may be better answered by moving on to his fourth objection.
Not only does Johnson think the pastoral conventions are out-of-date, but he also believes that the combination of the ancient imagery with Christian is nothing short of heretical. “With these trifling fictions are mingled the most awful and sacred truths, such as ought never to be polluted with such irreverent combinations.” The answers to Johnson’s previous objections partially solve his difficulty here, but in order to fully understand what Milton is doing here, we need to look a little deeper at some of the themes that Milton explores.
Plundering the Egyptians: Milton’s Use of the Pastoral Elegy within a Christian Framework
Lycidas can be arranged into five parts; we have an introduction, a conclusion, and then three movements, which are “practically equal in length and precisely parallel in pattern.”[11] The introduction begins, as we already noted, with clear pastoral overtones. But here the reality of Lycidas’ death changes the expected character of the poem. Usually, the subject matter of the earlier pastoral poetry had been largely hypothetical, but Milton almost immediately apologizes for his rough handling of this event. He is forced, by virtue of the reality of King’s death, to write this poem, to “disturb your season due”, plucking the unripe fruit, just as Lycidas himself was plucked from this earth before his time. But Milton himself is unripe: a young seemingly unskilled poet who now has the task of memorializing his friend.
The first movement then begins with an invocation to a Muse; specifically, the “Sisters of the sacred well / That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring.” Here, Milton references the nine Muses, whose well is found on Mount Helicon in Greece, just below the altar of Zeus. Suddenly the poet is reminded of his own possible death; a “It could have been me” theme now asserts itself. More pastoral imagery pours forth, as Milton remembers their life together. Everything is alive within the pastoral model; sheep graze, the Satyrs dance, and everything appears normal within that setting. But then things begin to go wrong. The fields are now empty, the flowers are destroyed by frost and disease, all gone without warning, just like Lycidas. In fact, the poet thinks that Nature has turned upon his friend. The imagery of water becomes threatening as “the remorseless deep.” Utilizing the ancient poetic motif of fixing the blame on something, Milton asked the pastoral subject matter if Lycidas’ death is their fault. The Nymphs were not there. The Druids on their heights saw nothing. But the poet realizes that Nature is not at fault here. Just as Nature was not at fault when Orpheus, too, was snatched in his prime, that ancient symbol of the power of poetry. Orpheus could charm Nature, but that ability did not help him in the face of death, as “his gory visage down the stream was sent / Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore.” Lesbos was the home of the Aeolian school of lyrists, the birthplace of the poets Alcaeus and Sappho. The problem the poet now faces is the purpose of his craft. The familiar conventions, as epitomized in the pastoral form, are suddenly unfulfilling. Orpheus himself could not control Nature, which is the subject matter of pastoral poetry, and both he and Lycidas die young, swept away by violent waves. Nature is either dead or revolting, and the poet is at a loss: What should he do now? The intensity increases as the pastoral model suddenly become inappropriate for the subject matter. Should the poet just give up? Should the fame that he seeks be abandoned in favor of fleeting pleasures? But then Phoebus, the sun-god, appears and tells the poet to take his mind off earthly things; as a heavenly being himself, he instructs Milton that true fame cannot be judged in mortal terms, but in terms of its eternal quality. The poet’s frustration and grief can be solved by faith, he says, faith in the knowledge that his friend will live eternally.
The poet seems somewhat reassured and enters the second movement by a return to the pastoral form. He invokes another Muse, this time using another water-based image, the fountain of Arethuse. Here, Milton references the birthplace of Theocritus, the originator of pastoral poetry. Let’s go back to the beginning, he seems to say, let’s try this again. But Nature is still dead, still in rebellion, and so the traditional model again fails. The poet still tries to see who was to blame for Lycidas’ death, seeking the answer among a procession of mourners, including Neptune, Hippotades, Panope, and Camus. Was it the wind or the waves, he asks? Neither, the answer comes back, it was the fault of the ship, the ship built with “that fatal and perfidious bark, / Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark.” There is something deeper at work here, something else which caused this tragedy. And that problem becomes clear with the appearance of “the pilot of the Galilean Lake”: the poet’s clear vision of St. Peter. The fault lies with man, the apostle explains. Sin has corrupted the shepherds, and now the sheep starve. The shepherds have been called to be bishops and pastors, to watch and feed the flock, but now theses “blind mouths” do neither. Compared to the unripe Lycidas, these men are overripe, and “rot inwardly.” The Spirit of God does not dwell in them, for they are “swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw.” The now-shattered pastoral imagery cannot work when the images themselves are in rebellion, full of sin, spreading their “foul contagion” or devoured by “the grim Wolf with privy paw.” But like Phoebus, Peter offers a more eternal outlook: “But that two-handed engine at the door / stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.” Faith resolves experience, just as it did in the first movement. God will come and judge the rebellious church, and redeem that pastoral imagery.
The third movement begins tentatively, as the poet calls for a return of the pastoral form: “Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past / that shrunk thy streams.” Again, Milton chooses a water-based Muse, this time the river god Alpheus, who chased Arethusa before Diana turned her into a stream. The two then united, flowing as one. Similarly, with the resurrection of Nature, the poet can now unite the pastoral images with their true referents. In contrast to the dead vegetation from before, the poet describes a catalogue of flowers, as Nature again mourns the loss of Lycidas. The effects of sin are still felt, as “the stormy Hebrides” swelled over the dead body of Lycidas. But the now-redeemed pastoral imagery helps during this time: “For so, to interpose a little ease / let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.” And slowly, but surely, Nature is transformed before our eyes. In contrast to the watching Druids of the first movement, we find a guardian Angel above us. Instead of dead Lycidas drifting to “visit’st the bottom of the monstrous world,” we see him “mounted high / through the dear might of Him that walked the waves.” And poetry itself becomes part of the resurrection process. The imagery is now infused with life, no longer the dead medium by which former poets attempted to speak.
The poem concludes with a change of voice. We discover that the uncouth Swain is the one speaking, as we are, in a sense, lifted out of and above the poet. In place of the brown leaves of despair, the poet takes up the blue mantle of hope, rising up “to fresh woods, and pastures new.”
Conclusion
Samuel Johnson’s problems with Lycidas are, in a sense, the product of his time. And at first glance, they are understandable. But my analysis of this poem only touches the surface of all the other things that are going on between the lines. Milton doesn’t ever think that the pastoral elegy is a perfect form all by itself; without the Christian understanding, its images become empty. And this is because of sin. Sin corrupts even the simplest rhymes that man can offer, and it is only through Christ that our words can be redeemed. The constant theme of water through the poem highlights this idea. Water killed Edward King, but it also saved him. Water offers no consolation through pagan imagery, but only through the appearance of those who conquered the waves do we find real assurance. By the poem’s end, the ebb and flow of poetic emotion finally find its rest in the knowledge that Lycidas is safe: “Now, Lycidas, the Shepherds weep no more; / Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore, / In thy large recompense, and shalt be good / To all that wander in that perilous flood.”
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