The Nexus Archive
English Christian Epic · Poetry
Lycidas
by John Milton · The Poet of Rebellion and Fall · Seventeenth-Century England, 1608-1674
Milton's pastoral elegy mourns Edward King while testing poetic vocation, clerical corruption, grief, and renewal.
- Advanced
- ~5 min read
- 1 chapter guide
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the Lycidas. guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
The Laurel before Its Season
In August 1637 a ship crossing from Chester to Ireland struck a rock and sank, and Edward King, a young Fellow of Milton's Cambridge college, was drowned. When his friends gathered a book of poems in his memory, Milton, then twenty-eight and still preparing for his life's work, gave them Lycidas. The loss presses on the surviving poet too: years of discipline offer no protection against a life cut short.
Pastoral convention supplies shepherds, nymphs, flowers, and song. Beneath that shared language of mourning lies a demanding question about vocation: what makes a life of service worth pursuing when neither survival nor recognition is assured?
The singer draws on classical myth and Christian belief, yet grief keeps testing the comfort those traditions offer. His broken gathering of laurels gives the poem its first image of work compelled before its season. A tribute to a friend begins under the pressure of having to sing when song itself seems insufficient.
The opening pages
Lycidas.
In this Monody the Author bewails a learned Friend, unfortunatly drown'd in his Passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637. And by occasion foretels the ruine of our corrupted Clergy then in their height.
YET once more, O ye Laurels, and once more
Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never-sear,
I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude,
And with forc'd fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due:
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew 10
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not flote upon his watry bear
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of som melodious tear.
Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well,
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring,
Begin, and somwhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse,
So may som gentle Muse
With lucky words favour my destin'd Urn, 20
And as he passes turn,
And bid fair peace be to my sable shrowd.
For we were nurst upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill.
Together both, ere the high Lawns appear'd
Under the opening eye-lids of the morn,
We drove a field, and both together heard
What time the Gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the Star that rose, at Ev'ning, bright 30
Toward Heav'ns descent had slop'd his westering wheel.
Mean while the Rural ditties were not mute,
Temper'd to th'Oaten Flute;
Rough Satyrs danc'd, and Fauns with clov'n heel,
From the glad sound would not be absent long,
And old Damætas lov'd to hear our song.
But O the heavy change, now thou art gon,
Now thou art gon, and never must return!
Thee Shepherd, thee the Woods, and desert Caves,
With wilde Thyme and the gadding Vine o'regrown, 40
And all their echoes mourn.
The Willows, and the Hazle Copses green,
Shall now no more be seen,
Fanning their joyous Leaves to thy soft layes.
As killing as the Canker to the Rose,
Or Taint-worm to the weanling Herds that graze,
Or Frost to Flowers, that their gay wardrop wear,
When first the White thorn blows;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to Shepherds ear.
Chapter guides · 1
Lycidas.
Mourning and the worth of song
The loss of a fellow singer unsettles the promise of a life given to poetry, before consolation gives the mourner a way to begin again.
A calling cut short
Lycidas dies before his gifts can ripen, and the surviving singer asks what labor devoted to poetry can gain when death interrupts it. Lycidas is the pastoral name the poem gives Edward King; Phoebus is Apollo, god of poetry. Even the Muse could not save Orpheus. Phoebus answers by placing true fame in heavenly judgment rather than public applause. Grief makes the poet ask whether a life spent preparing to write, or to serve God, is worth it when it can end so suddenly.
The flock left hungry
The shepherd's calling also becomes a measure of the clergy. The Pilot of the Galilean lake (Saint Peter, who carries the keys of heaven) condemns pastors who feed themselves while their flock goes hungry. His anger makes the young shepherd's loss more bitter: those who neglect their charge survive him. Lament has become an accusation against the living, not merely praise of the dead.
Consolation and departure
The flowers spread over an imagined bier offer only a little ease; the singer admits that the body may still lie far away at sea. Christian resurrection then supplies a different assurance, raising Lycidas beyond the reach of drowning. The final voice steps outside the song to show its singer rising and departing. Consolation permits renewed work without undoing the loss that compelled the poem.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read Lycidas?
- About 5 min in total.
- How difficult is Lycidas?
- Advanced. A short book of poems; about 5 minutes of reading.
- Which edition is this?
- The original English text, first published in 1638. The text follows The Poetical Works of John Milton (1900).
- Can I read Lycidas for free?
- Lycidas is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription. The opening above and one chapter guide on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- One chapter guide, written by the Nexus editors; it opens in full here.
About John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, and republican writer. Paradise Lost retells rebellion, creation, temptation, fall, and promised redemption with the argumentative force of theology, politics, and epic poetry.
“What does freedom become when it refuses rightful order?”
Milton gives Nexus one of the strongest English meditations on liberty and obedience, where cosmic rebellion and human choice meet in poetry.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. Lycidas is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.