Abstract
ceived so much praise as Lycidas. And despite the claim made by M. H. Abrams in his excellent essay, Five Types of Lycidas, the poem that we admire and interpret in so many ways is essentially the same poem.' Different readers and different critical approaches do indeed, as Professor Abrams points out, emphasize different aspects of the poem, but there is no basic disagreement concerning the main theme, or the progression of thought and feeling. However we may describe the loss suffered by the speaker in the poem, the uncouth swain, we can all agree that his loss of faith in a world order that allows death to strike a young man is eventually overcome by the belief in immortality. Whatever doubts the speaker has about the value of his own efforts, the value of poetry in general and the justice of God's ways, are certainly resolved in the triumphal conclusions in which
Published Version
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