Pastoral elegy, as the name suggests, combines two forms of poetry – the elegy and the pastoral verse. An elegy is poem which mourns the death of a person and also includes the poet’s reflections on certain aspects of life. Pastoral poetry deals with the life of shepherds who live in the imaginary Golden Age, thus depicting the life of an ideal or conventional shepherd in a picturesque setting. In a Pastoral elegy, the poet, in the garb of a shepherd mourns the loss of his friend - a fellow shepherd and the poem is set in the background of a rustic countryside. Pastoral elegy has its origin in ancient Greece and the three of the major Greek influences in Milton’s Lycidas are those of Bion, Theocritus and Moschus. Milton calls his poem a monody, which is a variant of elegy, but rendered by a single voice or a single mourner.

PERSONAL ELEMENT: The opening lines -“Yet once more”, of the poem introduce Milton as a young poet subsequently claiming his approach towards the laurels, myrtles and ivy (traditional symbols of poetry) in order to seek inspiration from them. The emphasis of self in the opening lines is done in order to establish the fact that the poet may too meet a premature death like his friend Edward King, thereby putting an end to his cherished ambition of a becoming a poet. Milton also says that he has come to pluck the unripe berries of the evergreen plants, which imply that he himself has not matured to write poetry, but comes forcibly to write it ahead of his time due to the premature death of King. The line “for we were nursed upon the self same hill” makes reference to Lycidas and the present singer (Edward king and Milton) having been brought up together. The speaker laments on the death of Lycidas and the repetition of “thou art gone” in lines 37-38 produces an emotional effect of high intensity suggesting the fact that the speaker can’t seem to get over the loss of his friend.

PASTORAL ELEMENT: Mi...