Thus Lycidas is neither wholly elegiac nor wholly pastoral. From the lips of St. Peter, typifying the church, comes a speech of violent denunciation, in the true later Miltonic manner. In strange contrast to this grim invective is the famous flower-passage, the sweetest and loveliest thing of its kind in our literature.
[1-5.] To pluck once more the berries of the evergreens, or to gather laurels,—is to make a new venture as a poet,—to compose a poem. The berries are harsh and crude,—he shatters their leaves before the mellowing year, either because he is to mourn the death of a young man, or because he feels in himself a lack of “inward ripeness” to treat his theme worthily,—perhaps for both reasons. He shatters the leaves with forced fingers rude, in the sense that his subject is not of his own choosing.
[6-7.] A sad duty is imposed upon him, forbidding further delay on any personal grounds.
[8. Lycidas] is one of the stock names of pastoral poetry. The poem, though most serious in its main motive and intention, is to have a pastoral coloring throughout. Note the impressive repetitions, dead, dead, and the recurrences of the name Lycidas in the next two lines.
[11. he knew Himself to sing and build the lofty rhyme.] Edward King had, in accordance with the college custom of his time, written verses, apparently all in Latin. Of these verses Masson, in his life of Milton, gives specimens. They seem to be commonplace.
[13. and welter to the parching wind.] See Par. Lost II 594, I 78.
[15. Sisters of the sacred well.] Ancient tradition connects the origin of the Muses with Pieria, a district of Macedonia at the foot of Olympus. But the springs with which we associate the Muses are Aganippe and Hippocrene on Mount Helicon.
[19. So may some gentle muse.] A peculiar use of the word muse as masculine, and meaning poet.
[23-31.] We pursued the same studies, at the same college, and we studied from early morning sometimes till after midnight. The metaphors are all pastoral.
[32-36.] We wrote merry verse, bringing in the college jollities, in wanton student-fashion, and the good-natured old don who was our tutor affected to be pleased with our work.