Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/100

 POEMS WRITTEN AT HORTON

��for his friend is a theme too cogent to be resisted, and the Muses must come, in spite of their denials.

Then, to make tangible the sources of that sorrow, follows a picture of the life which the two friends had led together. Under the beautiful pastoral imagery, Mil- ton conveys a veiled description of their college pursuits. It is not wise to push the dual meaning very far. If we are too eager to translate the Satyrs and cloven- heeled Fauns who dance to the oaten pipes of Lycidas and his companion, into Cam- bridge undergraduates applauding Milton's and King's Latin exercises, and old Da- mcetus into the tutor Chappell or Sir Henry Wotton, we shall spoil the poetry beyond repair; but, on the other hand, we shall quite fail to appreciate the spirit of the pastoral unless we manage to see be- hind the veil of imagery a quaint proces- sion of fact.

A stanza of lament over the " heavy change " which the death of Lycidas and the ceasing of his song has brought upon the countryside, leads naturally into a querulous questioning of the Muses which should have protected him, as to their whereabouts at the moment of his danger : "Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorse- less deep

Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? For neither were ye playing on the steep Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie, Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream."

The artistic intention behind this is to bring before the mind, indirectly and tentatively, the tragic circumstances and romantic sur- roundings of Lycidas's death. At the same time it subserves a further purpose. It enriches the classical theme by suggestion drawn from a dim barbarian cycle of po- etry and myth, and it prepares the reader for the more magnificent and shadowy ap- parition, further on, of the " fable of Bel- lerus old," and the great vision of St. Michael keeping guard upon his mount.

��One idea in this passage is sufficiently curi- ous in itself and sufficiently significant of Milton's habit of mind, for us to linger over, even at the risk of losing the thread of the analysis. Milton calls the Druid priests bards of the classic Muses, not in the general sense, because they practised poetry, but with reference to a legend which he afterward elaborated in his Latin poem to Manso. There, defending Eng- land against the imputation of poetic bar- renness, he says : " We, too, worship Apollo; of old we sent him gifts to his island, borne by a chosen band of Druids. Often, in memory of this pilgrimage, the Greek girls circle the altars in grassy Delos, and in glad songs commemorate Loxo, and pro- phetic Upis, and Hecaerge of the yellow hair, Druid maids, whose nude breasts were stained with Caledonian woad." This idea of a physical connection between the legendary singers and seers of Britain and the gods of Greek song and prophecy, had a peculiar fascination for a mind like Mil- ton's, which constantly craved to bring the diverse elements of the world's thought into unison. In its position here, the allu- sion aids greatly in making plausible the picture of Greek divinities disporting them- selves upon the shores of the Irish sea.

Across the mood of complaint strikes suddenly the desolating thought of the im- potence of the Muses to help their vota- ries:

" Ah me, I fondly dream

' Had ye been there '. . . for what could that have done ? "

Behind the gracious divinities of song looms a darker figure, omnipotent to destroy. Wistfully for a moment the poet turns to watch the gay hedonists of his generation, and to question whether it were not better done to distil the earthly happiness of love than to watch and agonize for the guerdon of the " clear spirit," since the blind Fury waits to " slit the thinspun life " at the very instant of its fulfilment. The ignoble despondency lasts only for a moment, and

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