Lycidas

“Lycidas” consists of rhymed verse, but the rhymes follow no regular pattern. No two stanzas rhyme in the same way. Also, 10 lines are unrhymed: Lines 1, 13, 15, 22, 39, 51, 82, 91, 92, and 161.

However, there are two exceptions to the irregular rhyming. The final eight-line stanza is written in the verse form known as “ottava rima.” This stanzaic pattern originated in Italy in the 14th century and was first used in English verse by Sir Thomas Wyatt in the 16th century. An ottava rima stanza consists of eight iambic pentameter lines, rhyming ABABABCC. Thus, in “Lycidas,” beginning at Line 186, “rills” rhymes with “quills” (Line 188) and “hills” (Line 190). “Gray” (Line 187) rhymes with “lay” (Line 189), and “bay” (Line 191). Then, in the final two lines, “blew” and “new” (Lines 192-93) rhyme. Lines 124-31, spoken by St. Peter, also form an ottava rima stanza; however, the first line of it, “Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw,” belongs to the previous syntactical unit, beginning at Line 122, so it is not the best example of an ottava rima stanza.

Enjambment, also called a run-on line, is a poetic device in which a phrase is not complete in meaning at the end of a line but continues into the next one. The reader must go to the next line to grasp the meaning. Milton uses enjambment on a number of occasions. In Lines 9-10, for example, the reader must read on to the next line in order to find out what Lycidas “knew”: “Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew / Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.” Other examples include the following: “And when they list their lean and flashy songs / Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw” (Lines 123-24) and “Ay me! Whilst thee the shores and sounding seas / Wash far away, where’er thy bones are hurl’d” (Lines 154-55).

Pastoral elegies frequently employ the device of pathetic fallacy, in which inanimate things are presented as possessing human feelings. Through use of this technique, the poet can convey the notion that nature itself mourns the dead individual. An example occurs early in the elegy: “Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves / With wild thyme and the gadding vine o’ergrown / And all their echoes mourn” (Lines 39-41).

Another example is the “remorseless deep” (Line 50), a reference to the water that submerged Lycidas. The reference to the death of Orpheus, “Whom universal nature did lament” (Line 60), provides yet another example. This may also be referred to as a transferred epithet. An epithet is an adjective or descriptive phrase. In this example, it is the human observers who “lament,” but the epithet is applied instead to “nature.” The same applies to the “cowslips wan that hang the pensive head” (Line 147).

Personification is a literary technique in which an object, abstraction, or other nonhuman entity is given human characteristics. There are several examples in the poem, including: “the opening eyelids of the morn” (Line 26), and “the swart star” that “looks” (Line 38) down on the scene in the vale. The longest example occurs in the final stanza, where it is applied to the sun and builds on the “opening eyelids” of the earlier reference. First, the sun is given a masculine identity by the use of the pronoun “he” and “his” (Lines 167, 169-70). Also, at dawn, the sun “repairs his drooping head / And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore / Flames in the forehead of the morning sky” (Lines 169-71).