On the Value of Lycidas

Lycidas is one of the most widely and highly valued poems ever written. Critics have called it "the high-water mark of English Poesy and of [John] Milton's own production,"' considered it "probably the most perfect piece of pure literature in existence,"2 held "it to be the greatest short poem of any author in English, the very criterion and touchstone of poetical taste,"3 and declared it "the most perfect poem of its length in the English language."4 Examples of such hyperbolic praise abound in Lycidas criticism, and they bear witness to the delight which has drawn readers continuously and repeatedly to the poem.5 This essay attempts to explain how Lycidas engenders such passionate responses. To address that question I will conduct a close reading that borrows strategies from several critical schools but uses them to focus on the topic of aesthetic delight. Although I discuss image patterns,6 I do not use them to praise the well-wrought formal perfection of the poem; though I focus frequently on textual incoherence, I do not attempt to deconstruct western metaphysics; and when I describe the momentby-moment responses of a reader, I do not look for anxiety or didactic guilt. I do try to explain how the text generates a pleasurable experience. Instead of attempting to justify this critical strategy in the abstract, I present the following reading of Lycidas as an example of my method in operation. In focusing on why people like the things they like, I am following the lead of Stephen Booth, who has offered the