Why according to the poet
was the muse unable to save Lycidas?
Answers
John Milton’s famous poem Lycidas is about the death of his friend Edward King—whom the poet calls “Lycidas,” following the pastoral tradition—who drowned at sea.
The first few lines of this approximately 200-line poem explain the circumstances of King’s death in a shipwreck aboard the Chester in the year 1636. The speaker explains that he is picking unripe berries on the occasion of Lycidas’s death. Lycidas himself was a poet, and the narrator describes himself and his late friend as shepherds tending a flock. Lycidas’s death, according to the poet’s metaphor, is like a parasite infecting cattle or a rose.
In the middle of the poem, the poet turns to ask the nymphs why they did not protect Lycidas. He then moves into a contemplation on the topic of fame, which many poets seek in order that they live past their mortal life. Apollo (god of music and poetry) replies, saying that fame is not necessarily within a mortal’s power to control. Next, Lycidas explains that the ship sank despite fair weather and so may have been cursed.
The speaker next describes the procession of deities and river gods, such as “Camus” for the river in Cambridge, who attend Lycidas’s funeral. St. Peter next appears and rails (using a shepherding metaphor) against unfit clergy in the Church, whom Christ will eventually smite upon their death.
This is not so for Lycidas. In death, Lycidas will become a “genius of the shore” (183), guarding and protecting travelers by sea. The poet encourages the shepherds and others in attendance at the funeral procession to cease their lament for Lycidas, as he will not stop being remembered when the funeral ends but will rise again, like Orion’s star, by means of his songs.
Finally, the poet gathers his mantle as the sun sets and retires for the day. Tomorrow, the poet will sing again in other pastures.
Summary
John Milton wrote “Lycidas,” considered the greatest poem of its type in English, near the start of his literary career, when he was invited to contribute to Justa Edouardo King (1638), a volume of poems commemorating Edward King (called “Lycidas” in the poem), whom he had known as a classmate at Cambridge University. King had drowned while traveling on the Irish Sea. The two had not been close friends, and Milton chose the formal structures of the pastoral elegy not only to honor King but also to examine issues that concerned Milton himself as he sought to make a life in poetry.
The traditional elements of the pastoral elegy were familiar to Milton, who had studied classical literature. These conventions include treating the speaker and his subject as if they were shepherds (pastor in Latin), invoking the Muse of poetry, rehearsing the history of the friendship being celebrated, questioning the fate that allowed the death to occur, describing a procession of mourners and flowers being strewn on the corpse in preparation for burial, and providing a consolation for the loss of one’s friend. Milton uses all of these conventions, but he adapts them to make them appropriate to his particular purpose.
The pastoral has roots in Greek classics, but in “Lycidas” Milton is concerned with explicitly Christian subjects: the death of a man preparing for the ministry, Milton’s future as a poet, and the state of the Christian Church in England (Milton was writing as a staunch Puritan on the eve of the English Civil War). Thus, Milton uses water as a unifying image that draws together the Christian elements, King’s own history, and the mythological structures of the pastoral. The poem is in iambic pentameter with irregular rhyme.
The first twenty-two lines of “Lycidas” introduce Milton as a shepherd who uses a water metaphor to call on the Muses (“sisters of the sacred well”) for inspiration as he sings a dirge for Lycidas. Throughout the poem, Milton employs the pastoral tradition of using song to represent poetry. Lines 23 through 36 describe his friendship with Edward King. T