“Studious Retirement” 1632–1638Thus sang the uncouth Swain to th’Okes and rills,
While the still morn went out with Sandals gray;
He touch’d the tender stops of various Quills,
With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay:
And now the Sun had stretch’d out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the Western bay;
At last he rose, and twitch’d his Mantle blew:
To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new. (ll. 186–93)Having had his vision of the perfected pastoral in heaven, the swain is restored to
hope and direction through the example of Lycidas–King, and can now take up his
several pastoral roles in the world. He retains his shepherd’s blue mantle and turns
boldly to pastoral poetry – “With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay.” Blue is
also the color of Aaron’s priestly robes (Exodus 28:31), intimating that, like Lycidas,
the swain will continue some kind of ministry in the church. And as he twitches his
mantle, he assumes poetry’s prophetic/teaching role – like an Elisha receiving the
mantle of prophecy from an Elijah taken up to heaven.^116 The coda presents the
story of Lycidas inside the story of the swain, both of them exempla for the Miltonic
speaker of the coda, and the reader. As it reprises the daily cycle of pastoral – forth
at dawn, home at evening – it opens up to the promise of new adventures, personal
and literary. In it Milton can represent himself as ready to move on to the next stage
of life and poetry and national reformation – most immediately to the “fresh Woods,
and Pastures new” of his projected European trip.