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Milton's “Destin'd Urn”: The Art of Lycidas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Joseph Anthony Wittreich Jr.
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Extract

T.S. Eliot has appropriately cautioned us against disposing of Dr. Johnson's criticism with indecent haste.1 He may just as appropriately have told us that Dr. Johnson, while always pointing to significant issues, has occasionally said the wrong things about them; though in doing so, Johnson has unwittingly drawn our attention to poetical subtleties that he himself does not perceive. So it is with much that Johnson says of Lycidas, and particularly with what he says of the poem's rhyme scheme. He tells us rather tartly that the rhymes are “uncertain”;2 he does not tell us, however, that the rhymes tend toward certainty until regularity is triumphantly achieved in the penultimate verse paragraph.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 84 , Issue 1 , January 1969 , pp. 60 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1969

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References

1 This paper had its inception in two lectures delivered to Professor John S. Diekhoff's Graduate Milton course at Western Reserve University. It was brought into its final form after hearing an illuminating paper delivered at the University of Wisconsin by Professor A. B. Chambers and after receiving a highly suggestive paper on the same subject from Timothy W. Drescher.

2 “Milton,” Lives of the English Poets, ed. George Birkbeck Hill (Oxford, 1905), i, 163.

3 I find one notable exception. In his Notebooks—ed. Kathleen Coburn (New York, 1957–61)—Samuel Taylor Coleridge frequently comments upon Milton's art of rhyming, particularly his art of intermixing “rhymes consonant and assonant” (ii, 2224 / 22.15); and therein he records the following rhymes from Lycidas: “deep, das, steep, lie, high, stream, dream, done, bore, son, lament, roar sent, shore” (i, 636 / 4.42). In an annotation to 11. 37–44 of Lycidas, written into his copy of Warton's Poems Upon Several Occasions, Coleridge remarks, “there is a delicate beauty of sound produced by the floating or oscillation of assonance and consonance, in the rhymes gone, return, o'ergrown, mourn, green, seen, lays. Substitute flown for gone in the first line: and if you have a Poet's Ear, you will feel what you have lost and understand what I mean” (Coleridge on the Seventeenth Century, ed. Roberta Florence Brinkley, Durham, N. C, 1955, pp. 562–563).

4 A History of English Prosody from the Twelfth Century to the Present Day (New York, 1906–10), ii, 208, 220.

5 “A Note on Milton's Shorter Poems,” Milton Memorial Lectures, ed. Percy W. Ames (London, 1909), p. 30.

6 Milton's Art of Prosody (Oxford, 1953), pp. 24–31.

7 “Milton's Prosody in the Poems of the Trinity Manuscript,” PMLA, liv (1939), 182–183.

8 “Lycidas,” The Italian Element in Milton's Verse (Oxford, 1954), pp. 71–88; “Milton's Early Rhyme Schemes and the Structure of Lycidas,” MP, lii (1954), 12–22. For an opposing view, see George N. Shuster— The English Ode from Mil-ton to Keats (New York, 1940)—who argues, “Prosodically the poem [Lycidas] reaches almost every goal toward which the Pindaric ode would later on tend. Nowhere outside of Greece could Milton have found authority for the very great license he permits himself in building and arranging stanzas which are not verse paragraphs (they are too definitely variants of one underlying pattern for that) but which are still too individual to owe their origin to Italian practice” (p. 71).

9 Many critics of Lycidas have discerned a pattern in the poem without defining it precisely. The most notable recent critics to do so are Isabel G. MacCaffrey, “ ‘Lycidas’ : Poet in a Landscape,” The Lyric and Dramatic Milton, ed. Joseph H. Summers (New York, 1965), p. 65; B. Rajan, “ ‘Lycidas’: The Shattering of Leaves,” SP, lxiv (1967), 53–54, 56, 63.

10 See John Crowe Ransom's “A Poem Nearly Anonymous,” Milton's “Lycidas”: The Tradition and the Poem, ed. C. A. Patrides (New York, 1961), p. 69.

11 For an incisive discussion of the madrigal's development, see Catherine Ing, Elizabethan Lyrics: A Study in the De-velopment of English Metres and their Relation to Poetic Effect (London, 1951); but also La Musa Madrigalesca; or a Collec-tion of Madrigals, Ballets, Roundelays, Chiefly of the Elizabethan Age, ed. Thomas Oliphant (London, 1837); Edward F. Rimbault, Bibliolheca Madrigaliana: A Bibliographical Account of English Madrigals, Ballets, Ayr es, Canzonets (London, 1847); E. H. Fellowes, English Madrigal Verse 1588–1632, 2nd ed. (London, 1931); Daniel B. Rowland, Mannerism—Style and Mood: An Anatomy of Four Works in Three Art Forms (New Haven, 1964). Rowland discusses the madrigal as a mannerist form (pp. 21–48) just as Wylie Sypher (Four Stages of Renaissance Style: Transformations in Art and Literature 1400–1700, New York, 1955, passim), Roy Daniells (Milton, Mannerism and Baroque, Toronto, 1963, pp. 37–50), and Lowry Nelson, Jr. (Baroque Lyric Poetry, New Haven, 1961, pp. 64–76, 138–153) discuss Lycidas as a mannerist poem.

12 Ing, p. 90.

13 Ing. p. 165.

14 All citations of Milton's poetry are from John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (New York, 1957).

15 For other analyses of the poem's rhyme scheme, see Saintsbury, ii, 220–221; Diekhoff, pp. 180–181; Oras, pp. 15–22; Prince, pp. 84–88. An analysis of the poem's structure comes parenthetically in Arthur E. Barker's “The Pattern of Milton's Nativity Ode,” UTQ, x (1941), 171–172.

16 Each paragraph seems, in a sense, to grow out of the one that precedes it with the “inevitability and logic of a mathematical progression” (Oras, p. 16). Oras defines and details an important aspect of this “progression” when he draws our attention to the rhyme schemes with which paragraphs seven, nine, and ten begin (ababcc, ababbcc, ababbacc). Clearly, Milton is moving confidently toward the ottava rima stanza with which the poem closes. Each of these paragraphs adds another line until, in the penultimate verse paragraph, the ottava rima stanza is all but achieved, were it not for the inversion of one set of rhymes.

17 The O assonance pattern, with which the poem commences and the presence of which is felt throughout the poem —especially in the first, sixth, eighth, ninth, and tenth verse paragraphs—makes its own symbolic point, which, though it may elude the twentieth-century reader, was still current as late as the Romantic period. Charles Lamb, after lamenting that “the old Pastoral way has fallen into disrepute,” observes the frequency with which some of these poets “impute a religious significance to the letter O, whether because by its roundness it is thought to typify the moon …, or for its analogies to their own labours, all ending where they began” (The Letters of Charles Lamb, ed. E. V. Lucas, London, 1935, I, 204–205).

18 The technique is used somewhat differently in Paradise Lost. In Lycidas, Milton's divisions conceal the highly regularized rhyme scheme; in Paradise Lost, the twelve-book division (1674) disrupts the balanced structure of the ten-book epic (1667). See John T. Shawcross—“The Balanced Structure of Paradise Lost,” SP, lxii (1965), 696–718—for a brilliant discussion of the poem's symmetrical organization. At only one point in Shawcross's argument must I part company with him. According to Shawcross, the poem was reorganized to “sell more books, reach more people.” Milton, he thinks, succumbs to the “hucksterism” of his age and its demands for a twelve rather than a ten-book epic (p. 711). My discussion, I hope, suggests that there is precedent before Paradise Lost in Lycidas and, one may argue, after it in Paradise Regained for believing that Milton quite deliberately conceals the main lines of his construction for the effects of spontaneity, irregularity, and tension.

19 Many, I should like to emphasize, not all of the verse paragraphs follow the discipline of the Italian canzone. The poet moves from the barbarous dissonance of the prologue to the massive calm of the epilogue, and this movement is reflected in the poem's style, meter, rhyme scheme, and stanzaic forms. By the tenth verse paragraph, the six-syllable lines associated with the canzone have dropped away, and in the epilogue Milton turns from the irregular verse paragraph to the predictable regularity of the ottava rima stanza.

20 “Charles Lamb,” The Collected Works of Thomas De Quincey, ed. David Masson (London, 1897), v, 215.

21 E. J. Dobson, English Pronunciation, 1500–1700 (Oxford, 1957), ii, 684–685.

22 Bysshe's Dictionary, p. 11.

23 The rhymes for which there are fewest precedents occur within the first forty lines of Lycidas: -ude: -oud: -ell: eel: -one: -own. With reference to the last example, Professor Shawcross has pointed out to me that Milton's spelling here of “gone” occurs in manuscript only twice, both times in Lycidas, in order to achieve rhyme with “grown” (see 11. 37–38). Thereafter, the rhymes Milton introduces abound with precedents.

24 Ransom argues to the contrary (pp. 69–70). The following rhymes appear with exceptional frequency (the number in parentheses indicates the number of times the rhyme appears in the poem): -ore (11), -ead (9), -ear (8), -use (7), -ays (6).

26 For discussions of the Orpheus image, see W. K. C. Guthrie, Orpheus and Creek Religion: A Study of the Orphic Movement, rev. ed. (New York, 1966); Caroline W. Mayerson, “The Orpheus Image in Lycidas,” PMLA, lxiv (1949), 189–64 207; Don Cameron Allen, “The Translation of the Myth: The Epicedia and Lycidas” The Harmonious Vision: Studies in Milton's Poetry (Baltimore, Md., 1954), pp. 41–70. Lycidas is sometimes described as a sort of miniature epic. There is, however, a basic difference in technique between epic and pastoral poetry. In epic poetry, the poet converts downward (i.e., through a humbling process he makes men of gods); the pastoral poet, on the other hand, converts upward (i.e., through a process of deification, makes gods of ordinary men). The point is amply illustrated by looking first at Paradise Lost, then at Lycidas, while keeping in mind Northrop Frye's five elevations of heroes (see Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, Princeton, N. J., 1957, pp. 33–34). Satan begins as a divine hero, but ends up as an ironic hero; Adam enters the poem as a typical hero of romance, but by the poem's end is seen as a tragic-epic hero. The process is reversed in Lycidas. King begins as a low-mimetic hero, but is turned imperceptibly into a divine hero through a series of comparisons, first with Orpheus, then with St. Peter, and finally with Christ.

26 This device for binding different rhymes together is used throughout the poem: cf. -ear / -eer / -ier (B), -eard (L), -ears (D'); -ing (H), -ings (N'); -ose / -ows (U), -o / -oe / -ow (R'); -ie /-igh /-y (X), -ies / -ise / eyes (F'). Through assonance, moreover, the three unrhymed lines are harnessed to the rest of the poem: cf. -das (1. 51) and -es (11. 39, 173, 175); -inds (1. 91) and -ind (11. 13, 71, 73); -ount (1. 161) and -oud (1. 22). For an opposing view, see Ransom who argues that “within the poem are ten lines which do not rhyme at all, and which technically do not belong therefore in any stanza, nor in the poem” (p. 69).

27 W. S. Merwin, “The Religious Poet,” Adam, No. 238, p. 73.

28 For an opposing view, see Daniells, pp. 6–18, 37–50.

29 See my note, “Milton's ‘Lycidas,‘ 192,” Explicator, xxv (1967), Item 17.

30 MacCaffrey, pp. 65–66.

31 I am indebted to A. B. Chambers for pointing out this parallel to me.

32 Cf. 11. 30–31, 190–191 and Rev. vi.13, viii.10, ix.l; 11. 100–102 and Rev. vi.12; 1.110 and Rev. i.18; 11. 113–127 and Rev. ii.7; 1. 130 and Rev. ii.16; 1. 149 and Rev. ii.10; 1. 171 and Rev. i.14; 1. 176 and Rev. xix.9; 1. 181 and Rev. vii.17. It should be noted, moreover, that not only the apotheosis of King but also the apotheosis of the pastoral tradition occur within the tenth verse paragraph of Lycidas: the venerable figures of the lamb and the shepherd become one in the final vision of apocalypse.

33 Adopted from Dylan Thomas' “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London.” Thomas uses the same technique as Milton, and with the same purpose, in juxtaposing imagery from Genesis and imagery from Revelation.

34 “Milton,” The Complete Writings of William Blake, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (New York, 1966), 29: 516.

35 Literary Remains, ed. Henry Nelson Coleridge (London, 1836), ii, 34–35.

36 See Marjorie Hope Nicolson, The Breaking of the Circle: Studies in the Effect of the “New Science” on Seventeenth-Cen-tury Poetry, rev. ed. (New York, 1962), pp. 1–80; Maren-Sofie R⊘stvig, The Hidden Sense: Milton and the Neoplatonic Method of Numerical Composition (Oslo, 1963), pp. 46–48; Georges Poulet, The Metamorphoses of the Circle, trans. Carley Dawson and Elliott Coleman (Baltimore, 1966), pp. 1–31.

37 Nicolson, p. 8; see also D. W. Robertson, Jr., A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives (Princeton, 1963), pp. 114–115.

38 Nicolson, dedicatory page.

89 For a discussion of the hieroglyphic poem in the seventeenth century, see Joseph H. Summers, George Herbert, His Religion and Art (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), pp. 123–146. Composed of ten verse paragraphs and an epilogue, Lycidas looks forward in its structure to the Morning Hymn of Adam and Eve in Book v of Paradise Lost (11. 153–208). This hymn is composed of ten separate units of unequal length and an epilogue; and its structure, like that of Lycidas, mirrors the divine order. For a discussion of this point, see Summers, The Muse's Method: An Introduction to “Paradise Lost” (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), pp. 71–86. But see also Miss R⊘stvig, who argues that as early as the Nativity Ode and Comus “Milton laboured to compose a pattern poem the shape of which should form a ‘dark conceit’ capable of being understood only by the initiated” (p. 51). A similar point is made by George Boas—“Introduction,” The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo (New York, 1950)—who says (1) that hieroglyphic poetry “impels an artist to conceal his meaning” from the vulgar eye and (2) that the hieroglyphic poet presents his themes in a way that only those “whose specialty was divination could decipher” (pp. 17–18).

40 Shawcross, p. 708. See also R⊘stvig, pp. 7–70. Douglas Bush's caveat on numerological interpretation of Milton (“Calculus Racked Him,” SEL, vi, 1966, 1–6) checks the fashion of indiscriminately assigning numerological significance to Milton's poetry. In Lycidas, however, Milton translates the traditional questioning of the nymphs into the subject of his poem at its profoundest level—the justice of God's taking the young, promising poet-priest while leaving the rabble behind. Interestingly, the theme of justice figures prominently in verse paragraphs six and eight, the numbers of which, because divisible into two equal halves, have been associated through venerable tradition with Justice and Judgment (see 11.80-81,130-131).

41 Shawcross, p. 696.

42 Anne Davidson Ferry, Milton's Epic Voice: The Narrator in Paradise Lost (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), p. 150.

43 John Freccero, “Donne's ‘Valediction Forbidding Mourning’,” ELH, xxx (1963), 335–376.

44 Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition in English Poetry, rev. ed. (New York, 1963), p. ix.

45 The phrase I borrow from Northrop Frye, The Return of Eden: Five Essays on Milton's Epics (Toronto, 1965), p. 91. My debt to this study is apparent throughout this paper. For recent elaboration of the idea, see Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Milton's Brief Epic: The Genre, Meaning and Art of Paradise Regained (Providence, R. I., 1966), pp. 3–67; C. A. Patrides, Milton and the Christian Tradition (Oxford, 1966), pp. 5 ff.; B. Rajan, “Paradise Lost: The Critic and the Historian,” University of Windsor Review, i (1965), 50. It is important to note, however, that while Mrs. Lewalski, Patrides, and Rajan are cognizant of the ways in which Milton modifies traditions, poetical and intellectual, Frye alone places the emphasis where it clearly belongs—on the “revolutionary” character of Milton's art.