Others criticized the piece for lack of unity. He uses figurative language to compare the hero’s obliteration by death to nature’s cruel method, sending canker to kill the rose, “Or Taint-worm to the weanling Herds that graze, / Or Frost to Flowers.” Samuel Johnson added his voice to those critical of Milton’s style for the overwrought lines. Milton continues by including the pathetic fallacy, so labeled later by John Ruskin, personifying nature to mourn the passing of Lycidas. What time the Gray-fl y winds her sultry hour,īatt’ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night. Together both, ere the high Lawns appear’d He calls on the Muse for guidance, including what some find an annoying self-portrait as shepherd, joining King in guarding his flock: Some find unintentional humor in the heavy pastoral tradition that incorporates hyperbole, as the speaker continues speaking of King, Milton’s highly stylized approach incorporates frequent syncope, or the omission of letters from the middle of words, for the sake of rhythm, a technique that seems unnecessary and distracting.
The speaker explains, “Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, / Compels me to disturb your season due,” emphasizing that King, as the plants, died far too young, “dead ere his prime.”Ĭritical reaction to Lycidas has long been mixed. However, these plants will never fulfill their destiny, as they have grown brown and will “Shatter” their leaves before they mature. Milton begins the elegy in the traditional praise mode, calling on Myrtles and Laurels, traditional plants used to crown heroes. That choice allowed Milton to characterize King in his pastoral as a good shepherd caring for his sheep, the familiar biblical analogy that applied to Christ. He also puts his elegy to political use, employing it to foretell “the ruine of our corrupted Clergy then in their height.” The collection adds little personal information regarding King, other than that he had proved a decent scholar who had chosen to serve the church. They combined their poems to honor their fallen friend, Milton terming his piece a Monody in which he “bewails” the loss of his friend. When word arrived that King had drowned in the Irish Sea returning to Dublin in 1637, his many friends were strongly moved. John Milton had known Edward King at Cambridge and wrote Lycidas(1638) as an elegy for his friend’s death.
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