Lycidas - Definition and Overview

"Lycidas" is a major poem by John Milton, written in 1637 as an elegy to a college acquiantence of his, Edward King, who died that year when his ship capsized in the Irish Sea. The name "Lycidas" comes from Virgil, a name he used for a shepherd poet. The poem is 193 lines in length, and is irregularly rhymed.

This particular work by Milton has inspired other writers. It is from a line in "Lycidas" that Thomas Wolfe took the name of his novel Look Homeward, Angel:

Look homeward, Angel, now and melt with ruth

And O ye Dolphins, waft the hapless youth.

The title The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner is also taken from this poem:

The hungry sheep look up and are not fed,

But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,

Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread