Lycidas by John Milton (As a Pastoral Elegy)

 

Lycidas

by John Milton

(As a Pastoral Elegy)

 

Lycidas is a poem by John Milton, written in 1637 as a pastoral elegy. The word ‘pastoral’ is derived from the Greek word ‘pastor’ which means to “gaze”. Hence pastoral poetry is a poetry which deals with the life and doings, loves, joys and sorrows of shepherds and shepherdesses and other humble dwellers of the country side. In a pastoral elegy the poet mourns the death of some friend or relative in the guise of a shepherd mourning the death of another shepherd. Theocritus, Bions, Moschus and Virgil were the great writers of pastoral elegies among the ancients. Their pastorals are characterized by a rare freshness and first-hand observation of Nature. They capture the real beauty and charm of rural life. With the Renaissance, the pastoral was widely practiced in Italy and other European countries, and from Europe the vogue of the pastoral reached England. Spenser and Sidney were the pioneers of this tradition in England. In their hands, the pastoral has much of the freshness of the early Greek masters, but in the hands of the imitators of Spenser and Sidney, pastoralism became a mere convention, something merely bookish and artificial.

In Lycidas, Milton has followed the pastoral tradition. It is a pastoral elegy. The very name ‘Lycidas’ is the conventional name for a shepherd and it frequently occurs in the pastoral elegies of Theocritus and Bions. The pastoral machinery has been made full use of by the poet. He speaks of himself as a shepherd and of Edward King as another shepherd both of whom were nursed together and who fed their flocks together:

For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,

Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade and rill :

Together both, ere the high lawns appeared

Under the opening eyelids of the Morn,

We drove a-field, and both together heard

What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,

Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,

Oft till the star that rose at evening bright

Toward Heaven’s descent had sloped his westering wheel

Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,

Tempered to the oaten flute;

Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel

From the glad sound would not be absent long;

And old Damaetas loved to hear our song.

Further, in the pastoral tradition there are charming descriptions of the beauty of the countryside. A thousand flowers bloom and beautify the landscape:

Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,

The tufted crow-toe, and pale Jessamine,

The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,

The glowing violent,

The musk rose, and the well-attired woodbine,

With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,

And every flower that sad embroidery wears;

Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,

And daffodillies full their cups with tears,

To strew the laureate hearse where Lycidas lies.

The passage is characterized by first hand observation and its freshness and charm are beyond question.

Again, true to the convention of the pastoral elegy, Milton introduces a procession of mourners mourning the death of their beloved Lycidas. All Nature-the woods, the caves, the echoes-mourns the death of Lycidas. Triton, “the herald of the sea”, Camus, ‘reverend Sire’, St. Peter, ‘the Pilot of the Galilean Lake’, are other mourners introduced by the poet. The introduction of St. Peter, also provides the poet with an occasion for a fierce invective against the corruption and degeneration of contemporary Church. Such denunciation is also a part of the usual machinery of the pastoral elegy. We find such denunciations in Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calender and in the elegies of a number of Italian poets.

The elegy ends according to accepted tradition on a note of hope and consolation. For Lycidas is not really dead, and “the woeful shepherds” should weep no more. Like the sun, he would rise out of the sea in which he has been drowned, and having reached in the blessed kingdom of Heaven would be entertained by all the saints. Or he would become the, “Genius of the shore”, near which he was drowned:

Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;

Hence forth thou art the Genius of the shore,

In thy large recompense, and shalt be good

To all that wander in that perilous flood.

In short, Milton in Lycidas has followed the pastoral tradition in its entirety. It is a pastoral dedicated to the purposes of elegy and lament. Milton might have owed much to the pastorals of Spenser and other writers, but by his lament he revived and enriched the pastoral tradition. A number of modern works have been inspired by Milton’s elegy. The authors of Adonais and Thyrsis “fed on the self-same hill” as the author of Lycidas; they too revive echoes of the Sicilian shepherd-music; and apart from such general similarities as we should expect where writers have chosen the same vehicle of expression, each has at least one point of contact with Milton. Thyrsis, like Lycidas, presents an idealized picture of university-life, and perhaps of sincerity and true feeling begotten of love for the scenes described, the advantage rests with Arnold. In Adonais, Shelley’s invective against the enemies of Keats recalls Milton’s onslaught on the church; a subsidiary theme has kindled the fire of personal feeling in each poem, and neither can be regarded as the consecration of perfect friendship.