John Milton’s poem, "Lycidas" has been called “‘probably the most perfect
piece of pure literature in existence…’ [employing] patterns of structure,
prosody, and imagery to maintain a dynamic coherence. The syntax of the poem is
full of ‘impertinent auxiliary assertions’ that contribute valuably to the
experience of the poem,”. The piece itself is incredibly dynamic, enabling many
different styles and patterns that overlap, “the loose ends of any one pattern
disappear into the interweavings of the others,”. Though a close reading of the
poem shows that the work itself is more complicated than it appears to be, on
the surface “Lycidas” reads as a pastoral elegy. The speaker, assumed to be
Milton, laments the early demise of his friend Edward King, a colleague and
close friend whose life was cut short by drowning “while crossing the Irish
Sea”
— Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
