Much of the deeper meaning of the poem centres in the three last verses of the passage quoted:
'Where the great Vision of the guarded mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold,
Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.'
The annotators say nothing, so far as I know, about the application of the great Vision of the guarded mount to the ecclesiastical meaning of the poem. The meaning I take to be this: in making the Archangel Michael, the guardian and defender of the Church of Christ, look toward Namancos and Bayona's hold, i.e. toward Spain, the great stronghold, at the time, of Papacy, and which, in the reign of Elizabeth, had threatened England with invasion and with the imposition of the Roman Catholic religion, the poet would evidently imply the Archangel's watchfulness over the Church against foreign foes. But the danger is not from without (this I take to be the idea
shadowed forth), the danger is not from without—it lies within the Church. Milton, or rather 'Milton transformed in his imagination, for the time, into a poetic shepherd,' therefore says:
'Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth.'
Lycidas, who is made to represent, allegorically, the good shepherd that careth for the sheep and looketh out for the wolf, is dead; and the lewd hirelings who, for their bellies' sake, have crept into the fold, and to whom the hungry sheep look up and are not fed, have themselves become grim wolves, and with privy paw seize upon and devour the flock.
'Lycidas' was the last of Milton's poems produced during his residence under his father's roof at Horton, in Buckinghamshire. He set out soon after on his continental tour. Perhaps the 'fresh woods and pastures new,' in the last verse of the poem, refers to this contemplated tour. On his return to his native land, he had to bid farewell, a long farewell, to the loved haunts of the Muses, and gird himself to fight the battle of civil and religious liberty.