In his 1879 book on Milton the Oxford scholar Mark Pattison called “Lycidas” “the high-water mark of English Poesy” (Patrides xiv). Not all have agreed. It is a very odd poem. Not only does it seem to turn back on itself when the famous ending (“Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new”) unexpectedly introduces a new voice that calls the poet of the rest an “uncouth swain”, but it makes sudden twists and shifts among other voices all the way through.
The poem is a response to the death, in August 1637, of a Cambridge man of Milton’s acquaintance, Edward King. Slightly younger than Milton, King had already had a flourishing career: he had been appointed by royal fiat to a …
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