ee ie Ba 
JOHN MILTON 53 
The willows and the hazel copses green 
Shall now no more be seen 
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. 
As killing as the canker to the rose, 
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, 
Or frost to flowers that their gay wardrobe wear, 
When first the white thorn blows, 
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd’s ear.” 
There follow the invocation to the nymphs, the sub- 
lime passage on Fame, “that last infirmity of noble 
minds,” and then the shadow procession of figures that 
come as mourners, — the herald of Neptune, the tute- 
lar deity of the river Cam, and lastly “the pilot of the 
Galilean lake,” St. Peter with his massy keys, who, 
“. . . shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake : — 
How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, 
Enough of such as for their bellies’ sake 
Creep and intrude and climb into the fold!” 
In the terrible invective thus introduced we read the 
doom of Archbishop Laud and his policy, until, in the 
concluding lines, which have greatly puzzled commen- 
tators, we seem to see the herdsman with his black 
mask and hear the dreadful thud of the two-handed 
broadaxe. In the unreal atmosphere of the pastoral 
eclogue, such denunciation might be indulged, even in 
an age when men were sent to jail for their printed 
words. 
From this furnace blast of indignation the change 
is magical to the wondrously beautiful call for the 
flowers : — 
“‘ Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, 
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, 
