The Thematic Significance of the Flower Catalogue in Milton's Lycidas

Abstract

It is now generally recognized that Lycidas was written not merely to memorialize death of Edward King, a young clergyman and fledgling poet who had been drowned at sea: it simultaneously manifests Milton's concern that death might also end his own life prematurely, whether by plague (which had taken its toll at Horton in 1637), by drowning (Milton was already looking forward to a tour of continental Europe), or by some other cause. Milton's doubts about his own future may not have been primary topic of his poem; but depth of real feeling in monody seems to have originated less in a sense of loss of someone who, however virtuous, had been little more than a college acquaintance, than in unsettling reflection that years of laborious study and frustrating self-discipline, devoted to training himself as both a poet and a teacher of men, might turn out to have been spent in vain.' At first level of accessibility, poem is an elaborately developed lament for King, both in his capacity as a poet (the first major movement, lines 15-84) and as a potentially influential Christian pastor (second movement, 85-131). Varieties of flowers are pictured as being strewn upon hearse (third movement, 132-64); but then lament gives way to elated mood of final section, that representing apotheosis of Lycidas and describing ecstasy of his new life in the blest Kingdoms (fourth movement, 165-85).2 These major divisions at primary level of meaning reveal Milton's concern at sub-textual level with his own potential for fame as a poet, as he moves from immaturity to maturity,3 and with his potential success as a dedicated Christian teacher, whether through projected Arthurian epic or through reform pamphlets.4 These concerns are made clear near beginning of Lycidas, in passage where Milton, after customary invocation of muses, expresses hope that another poet will one day write an elegy for him (18-24). And concluding lines of