[103.] Now comes another grand personage to make inquiry about the death of Lycidas. Camus, the deity of the river Cam, stands for the University of Cambridge.
[104. His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge.] The river god is represented as wearing a mantle made of water-grasses and reeds.
[105-106.] These lines refer to certain markings on the water-plants of the Cam, said to be correctly described here by the poet. The dimness of the figures may suggest the great age of the university, and the tokens of woe belong to the present occasion.
[106. that sanguine flower inscribed with woe.] This is the hyacinth, the flower that sprang up on the spot where the youth Hyacinthus had been accidentally slain by Apollo. The petals of the hyacinth are said to be marked with the Greek letters AI AI, which form an interjection expressing grief.
[107.] Lycidas was one of those collegians whose scholarship, character, and piety promise to make them the pride of their Alma Mater.
[109. The Pilot of the Galilean Lake.] See Matthew XIV.
[110. Two massy keys he bore of metals twain.] See Matthew XVI 19. See also [Comus 13] and Par. Lost III 485. The idea of two keys, one of gold and one of iron, is not in the Bible.
[112. He shook his mitred locks.] St. Peter wears the mitre as bishop.
[113-131.] St. Peter makes but little reference to Lycidas, and his words add almost nothing to the elegiac character of the poem. His speech is one of stern and bitter satire. The second period of Milton’s life, which is to be given up to intense and uncompromising partisanship in religion and politics, foreshadows itself in these lines.
[114. Enow] is here used in its proper plural sense. See [note on Comus 780].