“Seeing Foreign Parts” 1638–1639Arviragus, and of old Belinus, and of the Armorican settlers who came at last under
British law. Then I shall tell of Igraine pregnant with Arthur by fatal deception, the
counterfeiting of Gorlois features and arms by Merlin’s treachery. And then, O my
pipe, if life is granted me, you shall be left dangling on some old pine tree far away and
quite forgotten by me, or else, quite changed, you shall shrill forth a British theme to
your native Muses. What then? One man cannot do everything nor so much as hope
to do everything.^127After this extended account of plans for an Arthuriad, at the last occurrence of the
refrain at line 179 he dismisses his lambs, now less in annoyance or grief than in the
confidence of a new poetic direction.
But a sense of painful irony returns as Thyrsis recalls his eager anticipation of
sharing with Damon all that the Italian journey meant to him, symbolized by Manso’s
gift of elaborately decorated cups:
These things I was keeping for you in the tough-barked laurel. These and more also- and in addition the two cups which Manso gave me – Manso, who is not the least
glory of the Chalcidian shore. They are a marvellous work of art, and he is a marvel-
lous man.^128
The two cups have as their most prominent carved figures the phoenix and the
Neoplatonic Amor, an allusion to two of Manso’s books.^129 These and the other
carved figures occasion new sorrow as they point to the things Milton so wanted to
share: his rededication to epic and the epic line of Tasso; the “perfumed spring-
time” of those balmy days; the art he saw; and the philosophical discussions in the
academies. Yet the ecphrasis also offers consolation, since many of the engraved
figures are classical and biblical symbols of renewal and resurrection – the Red Sea,
Arabia, the Phoenix, Aurora, Olympus. The definitive turn to consolation comes
as the Neoplatonic Amor provides the terms for transforming earthly love to heav-
enly. Extolling Damon’s heroic unsullied virtue, Thyrsis locates him now “among
the souls of heroes and the immortal gods,” and associates that ascent with his own
advance from pastoral to heroic poetic themes. In a faint echo of the refrain he bids
farewell again, not to his lambs but to his tears (l. 202). Also, in a parallel to Lycidas’s
role as “genius of the shore,” Thyrsis imagines Damon as still able, from heaven, to
“assist and gently favor me” (ll. 207–8). Thyrsis now addresses his friend both by his
celestial name Diodatus (the gift of God), and by his pastoral name, “Damon,” the
name by which he will still be known in earthly forests – a gesture that leaves some
place for pastoral. Yet in contrast to the pastoral imagery in the apotheosis and coda
of Lycidas, the ecstatic vision with which this poem concludes shows Damon/Diodati
enjoying, not pastoral delights but a transcendant version of the Christmastide fes-
tivities Milton imagined for him in Elegy VI: he participates in sanctified bacchic
revelries and festal orgies at the immortal marriage feast.
With the Epitaphium Damonis Milton bids poignant farewell to the dearest friend