To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?
Milton's poem comes last in the collection, without title, and with simply the initials I. M. appended. It presents a strange contrast to the worthless productions which precede it. Unless the other writers' poetic appreciation was very far in advance of their poetic power, as exhibited in their several contributions, they could have had but little appreciation of the merits of Milton's poem. There is no reason for supposing that King's death caused Milton a deep personal grief, such as that which was caused by the death of Charles Diodati, and to which the Epitaphium Damonis bears testimony.
Milton had no doubt cherished for King a deep regard, as one exceptionally fitted, by his purity of character, and sincere piety, for the sacred office. And the presentation, in his elegiac ode, of these qualities, afforded an occasion for giving an expression to what was evidently a greater grief to him than the death of his College friend, namely, the condition of the Church, which he regarded as corrupt in itself, and as in league with the despotic tendencies of the political power. All the 'higher strains' of the ode are inspired by a holy indignation toward the time-serving ecclesiastics, whose unworthiness, as shepherds of Christ's flock, he sets forth in the burning denunciations attributed to St. Peter, as the type of true episcopal power,—denunciations which are prophetic of those he is destined to pronounce in a few years, in his polemic prose works, against the more
developed ecclesiastical and political abuses of the time, as one specially commissioned by God, so to do, in the words delivered to the prophet: 'Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and declare unto my people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sins.'
When the poem was republished with the author's full name, in 1645, it had the following heading: '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.'
This heading would, no doubt, have caused the rejection of the poem by the Cambridge authorities. Milton's hostility to the hierarchy of England was little suspected then: he was no doubt regarded as a loyal and dutiful son of his Alma Mater, and, besides, it is not likely that the several contributions to the King Memorial were looked into very closely by the Committee of Examination.
The death of the Shepherd Lycidas is made to image forth the death of a pure priesthood. It is possible that Milton may have seen an etymological significance in the name Lycidas (which the philology of the present day would not admit) and which caused him to adopt the name as bearing upon the ecclesiastical import of the poem. The name for him may have signified a wolf-seer, to look out for the wolf being one of the most important duties of the shepherd who has the care of the sheep and of the spiritual shepherd or pastor who watches over Christ's flock.
'The pilot of the Galilean lake,' St. Peter, 'the type and head of true episcopal power,' is introduced among the mourners of the death of King, denouncing the lewd hirelings of the priesthood of the time.