‘Lycidas’: A Wolf in Saint's Clothing

Abstract

In his 1879 book on Milton, Mark Pattison, George Eliot’s Casaubon, called ‘Lycidas’ ‘the high-water mark of English Poesy’.1 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’,2 but it makes sudden twists and shifts among other voices all the way through. When the drowned and newly sainted hero gets to heaven near the end of the poem it is not always noticed that the first thing he does up there in order to feel better is wash his hair: ‘With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves’ (‘L’, l. 175, p. 255).3 And there are further oddities. The poem is a pastoral elegy, hence the sheep and shepherds. But the wolves who intrude into the fold of the poem will require a bit more explaining. On the face of it, wolves and sheep, sinners and saints, are enemies, clearly opposed to each other. A question often asked but never